


Divine Providence and Other Lies

by Neko-no-Tsuki (LunaKat)



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:00:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 54,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23437333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaKat/pseuds/Neko-no-Tsuki
Summary: What do you get when you drop a temperamental wannabe-priest down a magic well?Well, if you ask Yasha Higurashi—amassivefucking headache.After being dragged into the Sengoku Period by a demented centipede, his once relatively-normal life has quickly deteriorated into an endless stream of insanity and misfortune. Including, but certainly not limited to: murderous youkai, an undead version of his past life, constant time-jumping, struggling to keep his GPA from plummeting, and playing jigsaw puzzle with an all-powerful wish-granting jewel. Which he never asked to be in charge of in the first place, by the way!Add one perpetually-exhausted hanyou girl (who is maybe-sort-of-kind-of cute in the right light) and... yeah.Massivefucking headache.
Comments: 61
Kudos: 34





	1. The Boy Who Overcame Time

“Now, the Shikon-no-Tama, known more colloquially as the ‘Sacred Jewel’ or ‘Shikon Jewel’, is a mythical artifact whose history dates back to the Sengoku Period. While it is largely shrouded in mystery, the legends claim it possessed the ability to make the deepest desires of the heart into a reality. As such, it was guarded quite religiously by a powerful— Would you stop _playing with the cat_ and pay _attention_?!”

Yasha Higurashi glances up at his grandfather’s disapproving frown. In the time it takes to look away, Buyou’s lazy paw makes contact with the glass bobble hanging off the keychain’s end. A light, tinkling chime goes through the living room.

A great, gusty sigh leaves Grampa Higurashi, and he reaches up with fingers grown gnarled and wrinkled to pinch at the bridge of his nose. One of these days, Yasha is sure that the geezer is going to pinch it right off.

“Maybe you should market these as cat toys,” he offers, flatly, tossing the trinket back over at Gramps.

Who catches it with a surprising deftness for someone so dusty and grey. Most grandparents grow soft in their old age, greeting their grandchildren with sweet, buttery smiles and showering them with affection. Mom’s parents are like that, cupping wrinkled hands around candies and knobby fingers pinching at cheeks. But Gramps is an unfortunately exception to the rule, eyes clear and sharp even as he pushes seventy and maintains a certain rigidness about him as though it were the only thing holding him upright. It serves to belie, and expertly conceal, the occasional bouts of senility that roil inside his skull.

As Gramps raises the glass ball to one of his keen eyes, his frown deepens. “You could do me the courtesy of _pretending_ to care, at least.”

He could—but Souta does that enough for them both. “ _Why_ are you tellin’ me all this shit again?”

When Gramps gets annoyed, this vein in his forehead gives a sharp little twitch. Currently, that vein twitches no less than three times. “As my eldest grandson, it is your duty to succeed me in the caretaking of this shrine once I have passed on. As such, it is highly important that you learn about these things.”

Buyou, displeased with the seizure of his toy, clamors out of Yasha’s lap with the feline equivalent of a huff. It’s probably kind of sad that Yasha envies the cat his freedom to just walk away whenever he wants, huh? “For the _thousandth_ time, Gramps, I’m _not_ becomin’ a fucking kannushi.”

“Language,” Gramps huffs, but that’s all he acknowledges from that statement. He never listens, the stubborn old geezer.

Now it’s Yasha’s turn to heave a sigh. He can feel the lecture coming, any second now, palpable as a thunderstorm broaching the horizon and just as unpleasant. _Guess this is what I get for avoiding my fucking math homework. Goddammit._

In a rare show of the universe’s mercy, Souta pokes his head around the corner. “Hey guys! Mom says dinner’s ready.”

Fucking perfect timing. Yasha flashes to his feet and has an arm snared around Souta’s shoulder before the little coward knows it—knowing him, he’ll bolt the first chance he gets, once he understands where the conversation is headed. “Hey Gramps, why don’t you make _Souta_ your successor?”

Sure enough, Souta pales. “What—”

“I mean, he’s _way_ more interested in this shit than me,” Yasha goes on brightly, ignoring Souta’s plaintive glare of betrayal. “Souta, tell Gramps how cool you think this ancient crap is!”

“You’re the worst,” Souta grumbles indignantly.

There’s a threat in the way Yasha tightens his grip. “What you _meant_ was ‘I’d _love_ to be a kannushi! _Especially_ since it helps my big brother out!’”

But Gramps, perpetually unimpressed by anything and everything that Yasha does, only furrows his brows disapprovingly. “You can’t just shirk your responsibilities off on your brother.”

 _Sure_ he can! It’s his divine right as the older brother, dammit! That’s the whole reason little brothers _exist_.

“Yeah! And Mom says she wants me to be a doctor,” Souta chimes in, the ungrateful brat.

Oh _sure_. Why help your older brother when you can save yourself instead? “Can’t just do me one little favor, can ya?”

In response, Souta squirms free of Yasha’s arm with the deftness of someone with a lifetime’s worth of experience under their belt. He retreats to a safe distance before Yasha can even reach out to grab him, flashing a wary but defiant glare. “Why should I?” he retorts huffily, with way too much attitude for a ten-year-old. “What’ve _you_ ever done for _me_?”

“You want me to make you a fuckin’ _list_?” Because he can do that. He can make a fucking list of all the times he’s walked Souta to and from school, or helped him out with homework, or lent him pocket money to buy stupid crap. With everything he’s done for his brat of a little brother, the very least Souta can do is succeed the geezer and make everyone happy.

“A doctor!” Gramps huffs suddenly, cutting off whatever Souta opened his mouth to say. They both abandon their conversation in favor of casting bewildered looks at their grandfather—who glares down at the wall as though it offended their family seven generations ago, his expression caught in the crossfire of aghast and indignant. “What kind of career is that for a young man to pursue? Hmph! Now a kannushi— _that’s_ respectable!”

...geezer isn’t even fucking listening. The goddamn hypocrite.

Souta blinks at Gramps, then turns awkwardly to Yasha. “...should we make a run for it?”

What a stupid question. Yasha is already starting to inch towards the hallway before the old man can notice. Reluctantly, Souta follows. By the time Gramps emerges from his rant about how youngsters these days have no respect for traditional values, they’re both long gone.

One day, it’ll dawn on Gramps that there’s not going to be a Higurashi priest in this generation. One day.

It’s nice to hope, at least.

* * *

“You’re all packed?”

“Yup.” Yasha snaps the third loop of the hair tie into place. True, his hair is long to the point of impracticality—a bitch and a half to maintain, and if it’s not tied back, preferably in a high ponytail like it is now, then it only gets in his way—but dammit, he _likes_ it that way. And anyone who has any objections to it have tasted his fists enough times to learn to keep their mouths shut, so there.

“Including your lunch? And all your textbooks? Oh, and your homework from last night?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He gives his head an experimental shake to make sure the tie is secure. The tautness pinches a bit at his scalp, but otherwise, it feels fine. “I’m not a kid anymore, y’know. _Geez_.”

“I know.” There’s a touch of fondness in Mrs. Higurashi’s tone as she shrugs her jacket on over her uniform. Because the business garnered by the shrine isn’t the most consistent of things, she’s taken a part-time job as a clerical worker in recent years to keep them comfortable in their lower-middle-class status. It’s a dumb and boring adult job that she’s never spoken well of, but at least it pays the bills.

While Yasha swings his backpack over his shoulders, the weight of her gaze settles on him. He blinks at her, and is greeted with a wistful sort of gravity in her eyes that immediately makes him frown. “What?”

Creases emerge at the corners of her smile. “...I just can’t believe you’re actually fifteen today.”

Oh _gods_. “Can we _not_ do anything mushy?”

Mom pouts, and then she stretches her arms out. “Just one hug?”

“I’m gonna be _late_.” And he’s _way_ too old to be doing this shit, dammit. He’s fifteen, not _five_.

“Alright, alright.” Resignation touches the light sigh she lets out, her arms dropping to her side. He resolves not to feel guilty about that. “Go get your brother.”

He gives a single nod, both an act of acknowledgement and gratitude, before he ducks out the door. Somehow, he gets the impression that her fond gaze follows him.

Ugh. Moms.

* * *

There are certain perks to living on shrine property, even if you aren’t devoutly religious. The Higurashi shrine itself is not particularly large—gilded and regal but not the most impressive—but the square footage that comes with it is an utter novelty in populous, cluttered Tokyo. The torii gate, blazing red against the spring sky, is an act of rebellion against the modern world.

Their house sits in the shadow of old power. An outsider paying only a passing glance would notice the shrine first, might completely miss the living residence, and would be taken in by the illusion of antiquity. Even then, their house is an old thing that looks as though it could use a renovation from this century or the last. Back when Yasha was in elementary school, a collection of particularly nosy classmates followed him home and mistook his house for another shrine, and the next day rumors ran rampant that he was homeless or too poor to live in a proper house and a bunch of other shit like that. But the tradeoff is a wide, sandy lot that stretches out in all four directions, and was wonderful to run around when he and Souta were little.

Of course, it’s not all wide open room. Storage sheds, a few proud sessha shrines, and the Goshinboku make for landmarks to help navigate the vastness. The latter is probably the most impressive thing on the property, second only to the main shrine. It sits at a front corner and faces out to the modern world, branches stretching out to the torii gate as though extending a greeting.

People seem to find the old sakaki tree fascinating, though Yasha has never been able to understand why. Sure, from an outsider’s perspective, there must be a mystique to this living artifact—a proud, austere thing, a sliver of old wilderness that rages against urbanization. It must strike these onlookers as powerful in its ancientness, something that levels a challenge against skyscrapers and captivates the curious from off the streets with the sway of its leaves. According to Gramps, when a sakaki like the Goshiboku reaches a certain number of centuries, holy power begins to brim beneath its bark, and it is this nameless but divine power that captivates people so. That also being the justification for why there are shimenawa strung around the trunk. Holy things are meant to be protected.

Personally, Yasha thinks that’s bullshit, and he’s never understood what was so fascinating about the damn oversized toothpick. A lifetime of catching something outside your bedroom window has a way of reducing even magnificent things to peripheral mundanities. In truth, the only time he ever pays it any mind is when he overhears Gramps attempting to pacify curious tourists with an outlandish story to explain the pale scar that interrupts the trunk’s bark. Stubborn old geezer would rather look stupid than admit his ignorance over something. But otherwise, yeah, he honestly doesn’t get what’s so enthralling about a stupid tree.

The same can’t be said for Souta, though. Maybe because he’s younger, or maybe because he’s less cynical than Yasha is, but he, too, gets drawn in by the tree’s quote-unquote “spiritual power”. Every morning before they leave for school, he likes to stand beneath the tree’s surreal shadow and fold his hands in prayer with a piety that Yasha could never bother with. He never talks about what he prays for, and Yasha could honestly care less, but it’s just another reason Souta would make a much better kannushi.

So it’s with some surprise that Yasha pauses underneath the canopy now. Morning light sparkles whitely through gaps in the branches, and there’s a rather pointed absence of pious little brothers.

“Hey, Souta!” Yasha calls, cupping a hand to his mouth. “Where’d you go?”

The shimenawa chain sways in the breeze, fluttering against the silence. It’s a big property, but he and Souta have grown up on it and there’s no way he’s gotten lost. _The hell is he?_

Then, almost belatedly, an answering shout. “Over here!”

Yasha whirls around, following the voice to one of the few sessha the property employs. It’s a modest thing, shoved into the back corner as though shying away from attention, with only the style of its construction and the sparse shimenawa strung over the doorway claiming it to be a holy place of any kind. This particular structure isn’t open to the public, takes no prayers or offerings, hosts no ceremonies or rituals—there was a time, once, when it did, but some ancestor or another apparently got spooked and decided to close it off. Still, a tarnished brass plaque has been erected as a proud companion to the shrine, detailing the legend of Bone-Eater’s Well.

Brows furrowed, he jogs over. They’ve always maintained a disinterested distance from the wellhouse sessha, but Yasha arrives to find that Souta has slid the door open and lingers in the threshold. His arrival is greeted with a pair of big, plaintive eyes.

To which Yasha scowls, caught between confused and impatient. “The hell’re you doing? We gotta _go_.”

But Souta only points into the oily darkness. “Buyou got in.”

“What? Why?” Sure, Buyou likes to wander the property—has the time of his fucking life finding little hidey-holes to cloister himself away and makes Yasha regret ever wanting a pet—but he tends to stay away from the shrines.

“Dunno. But I _saw_ him go in.” Souta bites the inside of his cheek, peering into the shadows as though expecting something to leap out. “...we can’t leave him in there.”

“Tch. Just leave the door open and he’ll come out by his damn self.” After all, the damn cat always came back when he was hungry. Fucking fatass. Meanwhile, they have to get going—Yasha can’t afford any more lates on his attendance record without risking a pointless detention.

But Souta only shakes his head. “Gramps’ll give us a whole lecture if he finds out we left the door open.”

Ugh. Fair. “So then go in there and get the damn cat.”

“...um.”

Suspicious, Yasha side-eyes his brother. “ _Problem_ , Souta?”

“W-Well, I just—” Souta breaks off, eyes immediately darting to the nervous fidgeting of his hands. It was that same damn fidgeting that convinced Yasha, only eleven at the time, to steal ofudas from the storehouse and plaster them all over his brother’s doorframe. And boy, did he get grounded for that. “...don’t you find it _creepy_?”

Too be fair, the wellhouse _is_ fucking creepy. It’s like there’s something hewn into the wooden walls, into the sagging boards of the platform, the rickety railing, the steep incline of the steps that descend to uncovered earth. Something not-quite-right, something not-quite-normal, something that leaves you more on-edge than you would care to admit. An ancient stagnancy lingers in the air like it’s long forgotten what freshness is. Gloom falls so thick within the confines of these four walls that even the slants of light pouring in from the windows get lost. Cobwebs flutter gauzily in neglected corners, a testament to a lack of human presence. A pitch-black floor waits at the bottom.

That aside, the well itself is painfully unimpressive. It rises from the crush of darkness, squat and unremarkable. Wooden flaps seal up its steep plunge into the ground, and a single ofuda is pasted over them—a remnant of some paranoid Higurashi priest that predates even Gramps.

Slowly, Yasha slips his backpack off his shoulders and drops it on the dusty ground, all while keeping his eyes on his brother. Even he can see where this is going. “Nope.”

A moment beats out.

“...not even a _little_?”

And this, right here, is why he hates being the big brother. “You’re not gonna go in there, are you?”

Souta chews at his bottom lip and peers down at his shoes and says nothing.

“Keh. You are _such_ a fucking coward—move.”

Wordlessly, Souta obeys, sidestepping almost eagerly. Yasha doesn’t bother to hide his eyeroll.

Stagnant air greets him. It smells like sawdust and earth and old darkness. He can feel the weight of it press down on him, the shadows parting like a heavy velvet curtain. The stairs creak beneath his feet, protesting his invasion. Something whispers in the distance, a vague rasp against the wood.

...okay, fine. The wellhouse is fucking creepy. He’ll admit to that, and that alone. Yasha is not, and never will be, scared by a mere flicker of shadow from the corner of his eye. He’s not Souta. He’s not a fucking coward.

So it makes no sense why his nerves suddenly prickle to life. Why an abrupt chill flutters at the back of his neck, provoking the hairs there to rise and goosebumps to nip at his shoulder blades. Something between dread and anticipation coils deep in his gut. The sole of his shoe crunches softly against the dirt as he touches down on the earthen floor at last, and the sound feels taboo against the silence.

Black obscurity roils in the crevice beneath the platform, where the wooden boards shield against the touch of light. Yasha can feel the steady thump of his pulse in his throat as he scans the unrelenting murk for any flash of Buyou’s pale pelt.

He hears something, then. Movement. A whisper, a rasp of nails. His gaze darts instinctively over to the well.

Which is ridiculous. There’s nothing inside. Nothing _could_ get inside. The wooden flaps that seal it up are undisturbed, surface thickly greyed by dust. Too-bright against the murk, the old ofuda pasted overtop is unbroken. Cobwebs, gauzy and thin, have reached up from the ground to latch onto the well’s corners. No human hands have dared to touch it in what must be decades, now.

 _...did I imagine it, then?_ He must have. It sounded almost like those annoying times when Buyou scrapes his claws on their wooden furniture. Maybe—

A low, warbling moan sounds from behind.

No matter what anyone tells you, Yasha was _not_ scared. When he whirled around so fast that his ponytail slapped him in the face, heartbeat frantic against his ribs, he was _completely calm_. Do _not_ believe otherwise. Souta is a goddamn _liar_. _Don’t_ listen to him.

In slow motion, Buyou oozes out into the open. The brown splotches on his otherwise creamy pelt melt into the darkness and make it look as though gloom tore great chunks from his face and back and legs. Dirt smears a light path along the cat’s spine, but otherwise, he looks unscathed, and unfairly unperturbed. In fact, there’s almost something distinctly smug about the way the fat bastard peers up at Yasha, then gives a twitch of his whiskers as though in casual greeting.

“Jackass,” he mutters under his breath, shuffling over to collect the damn cat and then toss him the hell out. Like he said before, he can’t afford to be late again.

Before he can get too close, though, Buyou’s ears suddenly flatten. The fur along his spine starts to lift, eyes narrowing into slits, lips curling back to reveal needle-like fangs. A low growl rumbles in the back of his throat.

Yasha stops, blinking, not understanding—until he catches it again. That scraping rasp, a whisper of concealed movement. He glances over his shoulder.

Buyou’s appearance and the start that came with it has brought adrenaline to the forefront of his system. In turn, that’s caused the shadows to sharpen to his eyes, transitioning from round, fathomless obscurity to crisp, dark angles that bend and creak. The stillness about the well is unchanged, but it’s no longer quite as innocuous as it used to be. In fact, there’s something almost _too_ still about it, now—still in a way that not even inanimate objects should be. Still in a way that thrums low and heady against the back of his mind, a murmur of warning.

It seems Souta hasn’t noticed the shift in the air, because he only blinks. “Niichan? What’s going on?”

Another round of scratching meets the air, more insistent than before. Yasha’s brows pinch. So he _hadn’t_ been imagining it. “I think somethin’ got into the well.”

“What?” Souta’s question is punctuated by the creak of the stairs, and Yasha watches as Buyou hastily lopes up to the platform and then darts out into the yard through his brother’s legs. “How?”

Good fucking question. The flaps are dusted grey. The ofuda is untorn. The well is untouched. But something scratches from inside. “Oi. Go get Gramps.”

“But— Wait, are you _sure_?”

“No, I want you grab the old coot because I think I’m _hallucinating_.”

“Don’t need to be such a jerk about it,” comes Souta’s peevish grumble, but his shadow disappears from the threshold all the same. Even without the obstruction, the light pouring in from the doorway does nothing to pierce the gloom.

Once Souta has gone, Yasha turns fully to address the well. It doesn’t make sense how something could have gotten in without disturbing its almost unsettling stillness. It doesn’t make sense—but then there’s that sound, that slow and sinister rasp of something pointed being dragged against wood.

Blood beats in his ears as he draws reluctantly near. There’s something _off_. He can’t really explain why or what. It just _is_.

His shadow falls heavy across the flaps that keep the well closed up, spills over like someone tipped a pot of ink and left it to drip carelessly everywhere. Somehow, as he reaches out to glide his fingertips experimentally over the surface, tracing out sharp lines that interrupt the dust layer, he feels as though he’s seeing the well for the first time. Gone is that banality, that lack of remarkability that made it so easily overlooked. Some undefinable shift took place when he wasn’t looking, something that has steeped itself heavily into the wood and overflows into the shadows. It’s in the air like a tactile thing, a newfound pressure that reaches out to crush. Dizzying, like standing on the cusp of something forbidden.

Yasha snorts, his palms falling flat against the wood. _I’m being fucking ridiculous._

No sooner has the thought crossed his mind than he feels it. A nudge through the flaps. Something underneath, pushing up against his hand.

He jolts back, alarmed. So there really _is_ something down there.

It doesn’t make sense, and there’s a prickle at his spine that’s whispering for him to run. There’s no danger, nothing that should make him this wary, but he can’t help the way anticipation thrums between his ribs. But it’s ridiculous, and he’s not one of those people that lets baseless nerves get the best of him. He ignores the feeling as he draws forward again, peering down to study the well, brows lowering.

Come to think of it, he’s never really gotten close to the well before. Never bothered to. Always kept his distance until now. Why is that? Why, now, does it seem to be suddenly drawing him in?

Somehow, the ofuda is what pulls at his attention, becomes the subject of his skeptical scrutiny. It’s the only thing keeping the flaps sealed in place, too-bright against the shadows. Ink folds itself into characters from an old dialect he can only vaguely understand. Yellow creeps in where the edges have begun to curl up from the influence of time on the adhesive. Ancient paper crinkles as he smooths his fingers across it experimentally.

The world narrows, becomes just him and the well and the darkness that beats around him like a thumping heart. He finds an edge that curls up against his fingers, as though in encouragement. His thumb and forefinger pinch fragile paper. A shiver goes through his lungs as he starts to peel it away.

You’d think it would tear, ancient and fragile and tissue-paper thin—but it doesn’t. The glue is old, offers no resistance. One brisk motion later, it’s come right off, as though it were always meant to.

All at once, the flaps burst open. Darkness roils to life, and white hands shoot out from the void. Cold fingers that catch Yasha by the shoulders, snare him by the elbows, grip at his uniform jacket, seize him by the throat.

_Ohshi—_

He barely has the presence of mind to scream before he’s dragged in.

* * *

Starlight bending through darkness. Wind rushing slow through his ears. Bloodless fingers bruising his skin. Six arms jutting out from a naked woman’s torso.

What. The. Fuck.

There’s a woman—at least, that’s what she _looks_ like, at first glance, but there’s something desperately wrong with her, and that wrongness only grows the longer Yasha stares. A cloud of long, dark hair swirls around her head like a miasma. Her eyes are too large, her mouth a weeping scarlet wound against her impossibly white face. Shoulders stack atop shoulders as too-long arms protrude from her body. From the waist down, she’s an endless, sinuous coil of vertebrae and ribs that look as though a scavenger picked them clean.

Spidery fingers have an iron grip on him, drag him down with her into the starlit abyss. His body feels too light and too heavy all at once. He’s clearly dreaming, because that is the only reasonable explanation, but still. What in the actual _fuck_.

Her lips move, but the deafening loop of _what the fuck what the fuck what the actual fucking **fuck**_ pounding through his brain drowns out the words. Rancid breath, hot and moist and fanning across his face. Cracking, like something splintering. Horror pulsing through him as he watches corded muscle and maroon carapace bloom across the skeleton.

“You have it, don’t you?”

He looks up, eyes wide. Bloody lips peel back into a fanged grin.

“Give it to me.”

And then they part to reveal a thick, too-long tongue. Yasha’s brain shorts out as it moves in seeming slow motion, inching ever-closer to his face. Wet and pink and slippery. A sticky line traced on his cheek. _Oh **fuck** no._

Instinct moves his body more than any real or coherent thought. His mind is blank, but his arm rears back, hand curling into a ready fist. Pressure mounts low in his belly, pushing against an invisible stopper. The centipede-lady drawing closer, lines of saliva stretched between fanged teeth, closer and closer and _too close_ —

“Get— _OFF_!”

His knuckles collide with her face, and then—

**LIGHT**

Corneas seared by all-consuming whiteness. Aftershocks in his skeleton. A minute eternity in which there is nothing but light and heat and the inexplicable relief of having popped an unseen cork.

When the spots flicker away and his vision clears, he’s greeted by the distant silhouette of the centipede-lady sinking into the starlit abyss. Moon-white face unnaturally blank, loops of bug carapace spiraling loosely around her, one arm sporting a messy but bloodless stump at the elbow. Too-big eyes burn a hole into him. Mouth moving soundlessly.

 _What—_ Yasha starts to think.

And then he hits the ground.

* * *

“Ow,” he grumbles, spitting dirt.

Gritty soil greets his hands as he hauls himself dizzily upright. Hazy light flutters down from above, turns the darkness dull and gauzy and grey-brown. Earthen walls plunge steeply all around him, close him in solidly on all four sides. Somewhere above his head bob ivy coils, leaves heavy and glossy green. The air beats down on him with the scent of slate and dry earth, stagnancy and dust.

He’s at the bottom of the well.

Yasha blinks at his surroundings, head spinning. No starlight shimmers in the shadows. No surreal thickness to the air that set him drifting rather than falling. No spidery fingers pressing bruises into his skin. No hot breath fanning across his face.

No sign that any of that actually happened. No—

_Holy shit._

“That,” he says aloud, heart hammering against his ribs so hard they creak, “is _not_ an arm.”

It is not arm. It _looks_ like one—white as playground chalk against the dark earthen floor, unnaturally devoid of color—but it _cannot be an arm_. Bony and smooth and far too long to be a human arm, because it is very much _not_ a human arm. Somehow, it’s been torn bloodlessly at what looks, deceptively, like an elbow, but is not an elbow, because it _not an arm_.

The those-are- _not_ -fingers give a living twitch.

To be clear, Yasha does _not_ yelp. When he scrambles to his feet, backing frantically against the wall, he is _completely_ calm. Ivy vines press against his shoulder blades, curls of leaves tickling at the place where his pulse beats through his skin, but he is the picture of composure. He is not frightened by the thing that looks like an arm, but is very much not an arm, because no way in all the Sixteen Hells is that _arm_.

Nonetheless—time to get the _fuck_ out of here.

* * *

Sky, wide and unbroken and candy floss blue. Open field, long grass rippling beneath a stray breeze. Forest in the near distance, deep and stolid and hazy viridian. Flower stems bending beneath the weight of their blossoms. Birdsong, high and bright. Insects, buzzing indistinctly.

The shrine is nowhere to be found.

“...son of a fucking bitch.”

Yasha’s nails bite into the aged wood. He’s grateful for the fact that he’s still leaning his weight against the well-frame, because at least this way he can process things while remaining at least partially upright. At the moment, his knees don’t feel particularly structurally sound and he dares not put any weight on them right now. His heart is beating too-loud in his ears, but he can scarcely hear it over the churn of hysteria.

This. Doesn’t. Make. _Any fucking sense_. How in the _fuck_ does someone go in one place, only to climb out somewhere completely fucking different?

That doesn’t— Fucking— _Shit_.

“Souta,” he hisses to the air, trying desperately to ignore the sharpness in his voice that is _not_ fear, he’s _not_ scared or panicking or freaking out, _fuck_ you, “if this is a goddamn _prank_ , I’m gonna _kick your ass_.”

It’s a stretch. He _knows_ what a stretch it is, deep down. Souta doesn’t have the pettiness, nor the courage, and would never pull something like this in a million years. But still, a wild hope burns between Yasha’s ribs as he waits for a response. Waits for some guilty whimper, some rustle in the bushes that preludes the responsible party revealing themselves.

Only birdsong and sunshine reply. His knuckles whiten.

_Fuck._

Alright. Alright—the forest clearing is very obviously not going to suddenly disappear or start making more sense any time soon. And no amount of staring dumbly is going to get him any answers. Just sitting here in a stupor is not a fucking option.

Warily, he casts a glance over his shoulder and down into the descending darkness. Sure enough, that line of bloodless white stillness remains exactly where it was, bright against the dark earthen bottom. From this dizzy height, he can almost imagine, for a moment, that it’s just another “youkai” bone bleached by time’s passage. Gramps always used to say that Bone-Eater Well was a “magical void” that devoured things that didn’t belong in the natural world, so people would toss what they believed to be the remains of supernatural creatures into its darkness.

Which is so fantastically stupid that he’s not even going to chance it by jumping back down there. It has nothing to do with the _not_ -an-arm, see. He just... doesn’t have time for superstitious bullshit. Yeah, yeah, that’s it.

So. That leaves him with only one other option. He eyes the woods in the near distance, a deep viridian smudge where heaven overlaps with earth. There’s something almost crushing about the way the tree line encroaches upon the glade, as though waiting the slightest opportunity to steamroll the open space and blanket it beneath the shadow of greedy branches. The canopy undulates beneath the weight of his gaze, dark and lovely as a secret someone takes to their grave.

 _Well_ , Yasha supposes, rising shakily to his feet and staggering over, _it’s as good a place to start as any._

It isn’t long before he finds himself under the forest’s reluctant supervision. Sunlight spears through the gaps in the leaves, dapples the earth beneath his feet in intermittent shadow and gold. The richness of loam deepens the air, each lungful dark with the taste of things growing and dying in strange harmony. Mushrooms sprout up with undeserved dignity from between the fork of tree roots. Birds flutter about between the branches, their songs leaving a trail behind them. Distant scurrying and murmuring suggests that skittish wildlife bolts from his unfamiliar presence. There’s less undergrowth than he expected there would be, aside from the occasional fern brushing at his ankle with a touch of unpleasant familiarity and bushes that quiver as he wanders past—otherwise, it feels as though the trees are parting around him, giving him deference to explore to his heart’s content. And while there isn’t so much a definite path, nothing really impedes his progress, either. There’s some stilted sense of cordiality here, an awkward politeness, like an old friend inviting you into their home after a decades’ worth of separation. And despite that tension, you can’t help but melt into the comfort of that distant familiarity.

If pressed, Yasha was willing to admit, grudgingly, that he finds it all sort of beautiful. The forest has an unfamiliar mystique, all crisp novelty and newness. After all, he was born and raised in bustling Tokyo, his domain all concrete and steel and asphalt and deep breaths tinged by car exhaust. Nature as lush as this has always existed as a distant notion—something to be admired, to be entertained in daydreams, but never experienced. If he weren’t trying to glimpse urbanization through the branches and search for the torii gate’s familiar shadow, he might have even relished it.

“Hello?” he calls out, shoving a low-hanging branch away from his face. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around, but looks can be deceiving. The well he crawled out of looked exactly like the one on his property and clearly wasn’t. There are enough bushes around that someone could hide from his searching gaze. “Anyone out ther— _whoa_!”

His shoe hooks a stray root that escaped his notice, and he barely manages to catch his balance on a nearby trunk to avoid eating dirt. Because why in the hell not. It’s not as though he needed _another_ reason to be pissed off.

But when he looks back up, he pauses. Blinks. Stares.

“...no way.”

It _couldn’t_ be. It sure as hell _looks_ like it, but it _couldn’t_ be.

Could it?

Jutting noble and austere above the canopy, an ancient sakaki tree declares war against the heavens. There is hubris in the way it holds itself, daring to reach out to the sky with its great, sprawling branches. It looks as though it would never deign to be glimpsed through someone’s bedroom window all their life, but if Yasha squints, he can imagine a string of shimenawa tied around a thick trunk and a torii gate sitting scarlet beneath its surreal shadow.

Even if it isn’t the Goshinboku—which, it _can’t_ be, seeing as how trees don’t fucking _move_ and all—at the very least, it’s a landmark. Something he can orient himself by. And fortunately close, a sharp distinction against the near horizon. He shrugs, because _might as well_ , and makes his way towards it.

Maybe a minute or so passes before the canopy abruptly gives way, and the forest thins to a small clearing. What would have otherwise been empty space is speared by the immense tree that towers out from the center, so very reminiscent of the Gohinboku Yasha grew up with that he almost thinks, at first, that they actually _could_ be one and the same. This thought, of course, is quick to die when he observes the way the wooden roots arch up, curve unnaturally as they reach up to snare their way around the thick trunk. It’s like witnessing a still-frame snapshot of a civil war, almost, in that a once-unified power now battles against itself for dominance. Leaves rustle, though no wind whispers through the air, shadows shifting across the grassy ground as though by their own volition. And most striking of all, pinned beneath the roots’ crushing embrace, is a—

...is a—

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me,” Yasha mutters, squeezing his eyes shut and praying that it— _she_ —will disappear.

No such luck.

Pinned beneath the roots’ crushing embrace is a girl. Roughly his age, if he had to guess—it’s hard to tell, an ageless smoothness to her pretty face. But she sleeps with an uncanny tranquility, and if she realizes she’s crushed against a tree, then she doesn’t seem to mind all that much.

He tries not to stare, because staring at a sleeping person is petty high up there on the creeper scale, but he really can’t help it. There’s a disconcerting limpness in the way she slumps against the bark, as though the roots alone are keeping her from collapsing to the ground in a haphazard tangle of slackened limbs. Whatever clothing she wears is only partially visibly through the wooded snare, and what he glimpses is gawdy scarlet and unmistakably dated. Her hair is silky platinum as it ripples past her shoulders, reminding him of the western tourists with pale hair that visit the shrine every now and again to gawk at “oriental” culture, but her lovely features are touched by Japanese blood. Whether it’s her natural hair color or if it’s dyed is a question he ponders briefly, until his gaze lifts to examine the crown of her feathery bangs. And it becomes even harder not to stare.

Yasha tries to keep his forehead out of his palm, but the weight of his exasperation is just too great.

Apparently this whole situation isn’t fucked up enough. Starlit abysses, randomly appearing forests, demon centipede-women—nope, not fucked up enough! Apparently the universe has seen fit to throw a fucking _dog girl_ into the mix.

A dog girl with snow-colored ears crowning her head, triangular and furry and unashamed of their strangeness. A dog girl that looks straight out of a hentai manga, like the one a classmate smuggled into class last year in a particularly cringy memory he would content to forget. A dog girl sleeping against the tree, pinned in place by roots that shouldn’t have grown the way they did, and certainly not so fast. A dog girl—

...wait a minute.

Hysteria twitches powerfully through Yasha as his gaze catches on the arrow—a sharp, unforgiving angle that sinks deep into the space where her heart would be. He swallows thickly. “Oh, hell. You’re _dead_ , aren’t you?”

It was the roots that threw him off, or rather the way they’d grown. Their hungry grasp envelops her torso, ropes around the arrow shaft so it looks almost as though it’s embedded in bark rather than flesh. Not to mention the soft serenity of her features, which make it look like she’s dreaming pleasantly, and belie the gruesomeness of her current state. Simply crop out the arrow, ignore the fact that she’s basically held captive against the tree trunk, and you could almost pretend that nothing was amiss.

Some foreign power takes hold of his legs, then. It feels like he’s staring at himself through the glass window of a museum exhibit as he watches his body draw steadily nearer. Only the presence of the roots, rising and making the earth too steep to approach, keep him from walking right into the trunk. This close, it’s impossible to ignore, now. She may not look dead, but her lashes don’t flutter against her cheeks, and there’s no breath whistling through the part of her lips. He doesn’t need to touch her to know she’ll probably be stiff and cold beneath his fingertips, or that he won’t find the jump of a pulse on the white column of her throat. Living people are generally not this pale, either.

This is a dead body. He is literally standing in front of a dead body. Because apparently the universe _hates_ him.

And she looks so fucking _peaceful_.

“Shit,” he hears himself breathe aloud. His voice feels like an intruder. He can’t believe how he thought she was just _sleeping_ before.

And here he was, thinking it was all bullshit, those comparisons between death and sleep. Here he was, figuring some idiot made that shit up centuries ago to comfort himself. Make death seem less threatening and enormous, somehow, by linking it to something everyone knows. Like there’s something reassuring about that. But a peaceful end is still an end, and just because a corpse _looks_ like a sleeping person doesn’t mean it won’t bloat with rot after a couple days.

_...wait a minute._

Dog Girl doesn’t _look_ dead. Why doesn’t she look dead? She’s too pale, yes, and terrifyingly static, but otherwise looks like she could give a cavernous yawn at any moment. She should _look_ dead. The only reason she wouldn’t is if—

An electric chill races down Yasha’s spine. _If she’s been killed **recently**._

No sooner has the thought cross his mind than something whistles through the air, just inches from his ear. It punches into the nearby trunk, misses Dog Girl’s only free arm by a centimeter or two. An arrow, unsmiling.

Panic races through his blood as he whirls around. The bushes that pepper the tree line, clinging close to the trees like children latching onto their mothers’ skirts, give a warning shudder. Oh no—

In the space it takes to blink, a ring of four or five men have ensnared him in a living noose. Older men, with silver frosting their temples and receding hairlines. Solemness in the furrow of their brows, sharp lines that fold beneath their dark eyes, a bladed gauntness in their cheekbones, a grimness that slashes their mouths into tight lines. Men who have seen more hardship than they would like, brittle dark hair pulled back into stubby topknots that look straight out of the history books. Their clothes are no different, ragged and dated, their hairy legs disgustingly exposed by the terrifically high cut of their very-short kimonos.

Each one bends back an enormous wooden longbow with strong arms and meaty hands. Calloused fingers crack around the fletching they pinch into place. Arrows tremble in anticipation, sharp flint heads gleaming with a deadly point. Yasha eyes the weapons warily, keenly aware of his pulse jumping in his throat.

Well. Shit.

After a moment of deliberation, he decides that dying would be very bad, and reluctantly raises his hands up until his palms are level with his ears. It’s not enough to leave him completely defenseless, but definitely enough to cripple his reaction time, and he hopes the gesture is seen as placating. “Listen, fellas, I don’t want any trouble.”

One of the men—presumably the leader, deep frown lines carved around his heavy mouth—shuffles forward. There are no shoes on his dirty feet. “Identify yourself, stranger. Who are you, and why are you trespassing on this land?”

Something about the way the man speaks gives Yasha pause. His pronunciation is odd, the inflection unfamiliar. For some reason, Yasha thinks back to the time when he was a kid—before he decided that being a kannushi was stupid and he was going to something less lame with his life—and Gramps tried to teach him an older dialect of Japanese under the logic that it was necessary to perform rituals at the shrine. Back then, he thought it was strangely fascinating, the way familiar words bent into new sounds, and it would feel strangely familiar on his tongue when he repeated them. Of course, he learned later that the old dialect wasn’t necessary at all, and that Gramps is just obsessed with authenticity to the point of madness. Yet another thing that exasperates him about the old geezer’s insistence on Yasha following in his footsteps—so fucking particular.

Whatever. Not important. The accent of someone aiming an arrow at his throat is far less important than the actual arrow aimed at his throat.

“Yasha Higurashi. Lost. Can you put the fucking arrows down? I don’t respond well to threats.” Slowly, he lowers his hands until his palms are level with his throat, still facing out in an attempt at placation. This way, he can at least keep his jugular guarded.

Displeasure crinkles the lines around the leader’s eyes. Around him, the troupe of archers that he leads seem to falter, breaking their scowls in order to exchange frantic and vaguely fearful glances with one another. Yasha frowns at that, wondering what he said. If he was trying to get _that_ sort of reaction, he would have done more than just lob some sarcasm around.

Unperturbed, the leader goes on, voice rough as unsanded wood, “Why are you trespassing in Kagome’s Forest?”

“...the fuck is a ‘kagome’?”

That earns a disdainful sneer. “Do not play games, stranger.”

A heady concoction of fear and anger coagulate into blustery courage, and Yasha narrows his eyes. “Oh, you wanna talk about playin’ games? How ‘bout we play the game where the pathetic middle-aged asshole goes ‘round ambushing unarmed kids in the middle of the woods with all his stupid lackeys? All ‘cause he’s too much of a goddamn _pussy_ to do it on his own. Hm, gee, whaddaya think, sound familiar at all?”

Anger tightens on the leader’s face. The quote-unquote lackeys exchange looks of wary befuddlement with one another, as though trying to decide why it is that Yasha isn’t cowering right now. Cowering would probably be smart—but, well, Yasha isn’t particularly renown for being smart. Or having common sense. Or following orders from people who point weapons at him. One of the many, many things you grow to love about him, see.

“Okay, assholes, you got what you wanted.” He has his hands over his chest now, guarding his ribs and his heart. “You did all the big scary tough guy shit and got to scare the livin’ shit outta me with your wimpy-ass arrows and all that jazz. So are we done here now? Can I go? I got places to be that, y’know, _don’t_ involve being threatened in a random forest by a bunch of geezers with outdated weaponry. Like, seriously? Next time just use guns, fellas.”

To which the leader shifts so that his arrowhead is aimed directly between Yasha’s eyes. “Keep your hands raised, boy.”

Heaving a sigh, Yasha halfheartedly brings his hands back up. _Gods. What in the fuck have I gotten myself into?_

Apparently deciding that it’s safe enough to do so, and there’s no risk of Yasha rashly trying to kill them with a weapon he does not have, one of the men turns nervously to the leader. “What should we do, Eijirou?” he asks with the same odd accent, his voice not nearly soft enough for a private conversation.

Eijirou, the apparent leader, answers only with a single twitch of his frown and nothing more. There’s a considering weight in his eyes as he continues to stare Yasha down, as though trying to decide whether or not he’s worth wasting an arrow on. Setting his jaw, Yasha glares right back at him, daring him, because if this jackass actually thinks he can intimidate _him_ , he’s got another thing coming.

“I say we kill him, just in case,” hisses another further to the right, testing the flexibility of his bowstring. Yasha’s gaze flashes to the gleaming arrowhead and he tries, desperately, not to imagine the point slicing through his coratid artery.

“Are you _crazy_?” snaps a third, this one with eyes wide and fearful. “He says he’s a _yaksha_.”

...eh?

The fifth man squints with wary skepticism. “He looks human to me.”

What?

“You can never tell with youkai, though,” says the first man, who has apparently never heard of whispering.

Do. Do they _actually_ think—

“True enough,” concedes the trigger-happy bastard, not looking particularly happy about it.

_Oh my god, these fuckers are insane._

“That’s enough,” interrupts the leader testily, which makes his four lackeys shut up. He turns back to Yasha with a cutting sort of disdain in his gaze, as though Yasha really weren’t human and were some sort of monstrous entity that needs to be cut down before all the livestock in the village succumb to plague. “We’ll take him back to village and have Lady Kaede determine what he is.”

While they bicker, Yasha casts a surreptitious glance from his periphery. Dog Girl’s silver hair and crimson clothing are bright against the dark tree bark, incongruous with the living whisper of verdant nature around them. Wildly, he wonders if she was in this very same position before she met her end, found herself an unwilling victim of the arrow spearing through her heart. Was it the same for her—these men circling her like a noose capturing a doomed man’s neck, menacingly slow, arrowheads aimed at the most vulnerable parts of her? Perhaps they bickered like this too, trying to puzzle out the mystery of her canine-human existence, before they ultimately decided she was a monster and slew her without remorse.

He wonders if she even had the time to feel shock, terror, the pain of her injury blooming through her awareness before she died. If she had any last words on her lips when death closed in, pulled her under. Before she became an unmoving husk snared beneath those roots.

Leader Eijirou makes a gesturing movement with his bow that draws Yasha’s attention back to him. The arrow remains hooked sharply in its perch, just waiting to soar free through the air and make deadly contact. “Over here, stranger. You’re coming with us.”

To say that Yasha doesn’t want to join her is an understatement. In fact, words could not possibly describe the sudden and contrary instinct that rears up in his belly at the order. The desperation that surges through him, sends his pulse beating through him so powerfully that he can feel the vibration of it in his teeth. The heady brand of reckless courage that rises dizzily to the surface, blots out common sense and has his skin humming.

“Let’s _go_ , stranger,” Leader Eijirou snaps.

“...yeah. That’s not fucking happening.”

That gives the leader a momentary pause. Yasha’s hands drop, crash into each other, knuckles striking palm. He breathes in deep, all at once feeling like a little kid again, thrust back into all those times he had to throw hands with someone bigger and stronger and who had better things to do than mess with him but did it anyway. Those were always the fights that got messiest, all desperation and reckless anger. Those were the fights that left old-new scars dancing across the ridges of his knuckles, where teeth split skin.

Deep, deep in some corner of his mind is a rational sliver that laughs loud and hard and choking at what he’s about to do. It would be so much smarter to submit, to run—but like hell that’s going to happen. Even his near-nonexistent common sense knows better than to argue with him on that front. Instead, that sliver decides instead to bow out, gracefully and without a word, so it can have deniability. Because let’s face it, even if he does make it out of this alive and his relatively suicidal plan doesn’t get him killed, this is probably going to hurt. A lot.

But god _dammit_. Yasha _doesn’t want to die_.

Recovering, the leader scowls. “This is _not_ a negotiation—”

Poor man doesn’t even get a chance to finish before Yasha charges with a war cry.

* * *

Being carried, wrists and ankles bound, is not particularly dignified. Being carried while people emerge from their houses to gawk, eyes wide and wary, murmurs breaking out among the forming crowd, borders on humiliating.

Yasha curses, writhes and bucks and does everything in his power to fight the grip this grown man has on him. No good. He’s held too tight, the rope chafing unforgivingly at his wrists and his ankles. His knuckles still throb, a rainbow of bruises probably making their debut right about now. All of it serves as a bitter and painful testament to his fruitless efforts in fighting tooth and nail for his freedom.

And the sad thing is, it almost looked like he was going to get away, too. The men were so terrified by his sudden charge that they dropped their weapons in a clatter, belting girlish screams as they turned tail and ducked into the undergrowth. It is with great satisfaction that he can say he lost count of the number of times his fists collided with faces. The dizzying blur of adrenaline mixed with triumph, and he was so, so certain that he was going to get away. That his half-baked, probably-suicidal plan for escape was actually going to pan out for him. That today wasn’t going to totally suck, because for the first time since he got up this morning, something was going his way.

But somewhere between knocking out teeth and breaking noses, reinforcements arrived. Some asshole managed to land a good one to Yasha’s temple, leaving him dazed enough to be pinned to the forest floor and then bound up in rope that came from seemingly nowhere. By the time he’d regained his senses, some burly asshole had hoisted him over his shoulder like a sack of fucking flour.

So yeah, he’s eager to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible. And ram his feet into this asshole’s face. Oh, he can just _imagine_ the crunch of the bastard’s nose beneath the soles of his shoes, the scream accompanying a spurt of scarlet blood—it’s gonna be _so_ satisfying. He can _feel_ it. If he can just angle his feet right...

Before he can, though, Yasha is dropped, quite unceremoniously, to the ground. He spits dirt, irritation rising. _This is the **second** time today. Does somebody fucking have it out for me or something?_

“Quite the catch you men have made,” comes an old, creaking voice from above.

Defiance flares in him as he hauls himself upright, glaring. The woman that peers down at him, as though he were a living curiosity, is an ancient creature that almost looks on the cusp of crumbling into dust.

Okay, maybe he’s exaggerating just a smidge, but she’s still really fucking old. Her face is weathered, wrinkles and creases carving deep, serious lines into her features. A black eyepatch snares one side, hiding the presumed empty socket behind a leather shield. Age has blanched the color from her long, limp-hanging hair until all that remains is a dreary, dusty grey. The curve of her spine bows her forward, as though her bones are simply too exhausted to maintain a dignified posture. But what surprises him most, perhaps, is her attire—the white kimono top and scarlet hakama of a miko’s ensemble.

 _And here I thought miko were supposed to be young and pretty._ Not that Yasha has lots of experience with miko. While he’s seen Mom occasionally dress the part for special events, it was only because their shrine employed none, was manned solely by Gramps for as long as he could remember.

In the meantime, a proper crowd has gathered in around them, clustered at the edges of what is presumably the town square with all the eagerness of weeds sprouting in and then overrunning a modest garden. Murmurs break out in a sudden gush that leaves the air practically buzzing with hushed inquisition. Curious children peer around their mothers’ legs. Young men superimpose themselves over young women like human shields, despite their own wariness. Older women with silver in their hair and nothing better to do turn to each other, voices pitchy and eager with the prospect of gossip. Men whose faces are lined by a lifetime of scowling hold themselves in a guarded fashion. The elderly make religious signs with wrinkled fingers, then fold their hands in prayer.

Yasha wishes his hands were free so he could flip them all off.

With a touch of wry amusement, the old cyclops continues, “I was under the impression that you men were out hunting deer. This, however, looks like no deer _I_ have ever seen.”

Okay—fuck her. _Fuck_ this old lady for making a fucking _joke_ out of this. Yasha is being goddamn _kidnapped_.

“Be careful, Lady Kaede,” whispers the man who wanted to shoot Yasha immediately—he stands next to the crone now, eyes comically wide, hand cupping his mouth as though sharing a destructive secret, the entire left side of his face colored in bruises from Yasha’s fists. “This be a demon _most_ vile.”

Oh, _that_ does it. Yasha bolts upright so fast that the loose circle of men jump back, their faces flashing with a fear so genuine he almost takes pleasure in it. “If you got somethin’ to _say_ , then you come over here an’ say it to my fucking _face_ , you pansy-ass bastard-fucker!”

Immediately, the point of a spear finds itself leveled at Yasha’s throat. He casts a particularly scathing glare at the man who holds it at him—the one who didn’t know how to whisper properly. One of the asshole’s eyes is swollen shut, the flesh coloring to a deep purple bordering on black. Vaguely, Yasha recalls that this was the man who he managed to kick in the face while he was being pinned to the forest floor, his foot making a jarring contact against the asshole’s orbital socket. And clearly the asshole seems to remember too, because the longer Yasha glares, the shinier his forehead grows with cold sweat.

Somewhere between curious and spiteful, Yasha gnashes his teeth at the air. He’s nowhere near enough to be threatening, but still, the asshole gives a girlish shriek as he stumbles back. In his fright, the spear hits the dirt with a muted thump.

_Keh. Pussy._

“Begone, demon!”

Yasha turns just in time to be assaulted with a cloud of sulfur.

Naturally, he coughs. Gags and spits and hacks. It burns at his eyes, stings at his nose and in the back of his throat where he accidentally breathed it in. Somewhere over his fit, there’s a bemused, “Hmm, so he’s a human after all.”

“What the _hell_?!” Yasha spits, glaring up through watery eyes.

Old Lady Cyclops only casually returns the leather pouch to her hip, as though this were a completely normal thing to do, throwing random shit in people’s faces. “At ease, men. What accosted you today was no more than a willful and foul-mouthed boy.”

“Oh, _ouch_ ,” he drawls. If only his hands were free, he could fake a swoon for dramatic effect. “I’m wounded. Fatally wounded. Help me, I’m bleeding from that terrible, _terrible_ insult that I’ve _never heard before in my entire life_.” A snort leaves him as he sits back a little on his haunches, trying to look as dignified and unruffled as someone can when they’re tied up and sitting in the dirt. “If you want, I’ll give you a minute to think of something a little more original.”

Immediately, another spear finds itself broaching the personal bubble of Yasha’s face. “Oi! Show some _respect_ , you—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m a disrespectful wretch. Worst of the worst, vilest of the vile.” It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before. Old people just love to point out how impious and discourteous Yasha is, as though it were some novelty, as though their creaking words alone could rehabilitate him. At least Gramps had the good sense to give up while he was ahead.

More murmuring breaks out from the crowd. The previous pitch of apprehension and wariness is replaced by something scornful, something almost condemning. It’s one thing to have old people call Yasha impertinent, but it’s another thing entirely when there are children loudly whispering to their parents, asking why the funny boy is talking to “Kaede-sama” like that. It’s another thing entirely when there are people close to his age casting him disgusted glares.

He glares right back, trying not to let himself be daunted—and that’s when he notices it.

No one in the crowd wears shoes, their feet dirty and cracked and blistered in places. Their brows are dark in a way that implies the sun beats down on them at all times of the day, hair oily from presumably too little time acquainted with shampoo. Men of all ages sport stumpy topknots jutting out from the backs of their heads, even the children. Antiquated clothing adorns every man, woman, and child, worn and threadbare and very simple. Some of the men don’t even wear pants, their robes hanging just long enough to cover their thighs for modesty’s sake. Fruits of hard labor are cradled in peoples’ arms—a sickle for reaping crops here, a basket of dirty clothes there. Behind them, simple wooden huts rise up in all their modest glory, the perfect backdrop for the life of peasants who haven’t yet lived through industrialization.

 _Okay... I’m surrounded by yokels. Not a big deal. No idea that people still lived like this—but hell, I’ve never been outside of Tokyo, so the fuck do I know? Whatever. Doesn’t matter._ _They’re still fucking kidnappers._

Trying his best to hide his discomfort behind a scowl, he side-eyes the spear-point aimed at his cheek. When his gaze lands upon the man daring to thrust it out, the idiot immediately blanches, faltering.

Yasha’s exasperation becomes real and he rolls his eyes. “Put that thing away before you hurt yourself, dumbass.”

The man opens his mouth to fire off something—a scathing retort that was likely to come out stuttered, because these people have absolutely no ability to bluff—but Old Lady Cyclops stays him with a weathered hand on his shoulder. “Calm yourself, Yukito.”

After a moment, the man named Yukito decides that starting a fight he can’t finish is unwise after all. The spear withdraws. Yasha makes no attempt to hide his triumph.

Turning, Old Lady Cyclops addresses him again, and his good mood evaporates. “Pray tell me, child. Where are you from?”

“A place where everyone has two eyes and doesn’t throw shit in people’s faces,” Yasha retorts sourly.

Gasps erupt from the crowd. Men grind their teeth. Women murmur, aghast. Children snicker. The elderly send apologies to the gods. And holy shit, he has to get the hell out of here. Like, yesterday.

Old Lady Cyclops is unimpressed. Her single eye falls half-lidded. “...you’re quite the mouthy one, aren’t you?”

Boy, if he had five yen for every time he heard _that_. “Keh.”

A weary sigh dislodges itself from the old woman’s dusty lungs, heavy and bone-deep, as though Yasha were adding years to her life just by existing. It’s the same way that Gramps likes to sigh when Yasha is particularly disrespectful or irresponsible—when he’s managed to avoid things he has no interest in, tune out unwarranted lectures, duck out from responsibilities he never asked for. The sigh always signals that the old coot is about to throw in the towel for the day, because he’s more interested in not dying of exasperation than he is in curbing his eldest grandson’s wayward habits. Perhaps the hag is going to do the same, admit defeat and simply let him go before he annoys away the last of her life.

But instead, she begins to lower herself creakily down to one knee. Once she has, her face is level with his, and the weight of her single eye falls heavier over him. This close, he can count every last wrinkle and fold in her skin, can make out the places where white is creeping over her smoke-grey hair and blanching out the last traces of color from her scalp. Small, faded scars peek out from the edge of her eyepatch, hinting at a gruesome wound best left to the imagination.

It’s here that he realizes that lone dark eye of hers has the same keen clarity that Gramps has—someone old with a mind that hasn’t softened from it. In fact, he’s a little unnerved to find that her gaze is as flinty as it is, like someone sharpened it to a fine point.

“I wish to have an honest conversation with you,” she says, slow and careful and not unkind.

Refusing to be perturbed by the closeness, he tugs pointedly his wrists, still bound up behind his back. “Maybe _untie_ me, then?”

“First, answer me this: what business have you in this village?”

Uh, what? “Lady, _you’re_ the one who dragged _me_ here.”

A guarded skepticism gathers on her sagging face. “You attacked our men.”

Is. Is she serious? “They threatened to _shoot_ me.”

The skepticism grows. “You told them you were a yaksha.”

Oh fucking _hell_. “Yasha is my fucking _name_. Yasha Higurashi!”

That causes her to outright frown. Her keen eye does a quick sweep of his face, as though searching for something that will disprove this assertion. When she finds none, her brows furrow. “‘Yasha’ is... an _odd_ name for a young man.”

“Again with the lack of originality.” He shoves aside the memory of cruel jeers on the playground and, again, tugs pointedly at his bound wrists. “Can you just fucking untie me so I can get the hell out of here? I have places to _be_.”

To which she only blinks (...winks?) once, calmly. “Such as?”

“Oh, well I have this list, just in my back pocket here, of _all_ my personal information. Y’know, just in case I ever found myself kidnapped and wanted to fuck myself over completely.” He scoffs. “Fuck you, lady. That’s all I have to say.”

She exhales heavily through her nostrils with something like weary disappointment. It’s the same way that the teachers at school sigh when they try to talk to him after-class about improving his attitude, only to realize he’s a lost cause. For a moment, he’s rankled, opening his mouth to let loose some choice profanity on her, when she replies with a resigned, “Very well.”

He snaps his jaw shut, blinking. Wait, what? Does... Does that meant she’s letting him go, right?

But his hopes are dashed when she turns to the man she called Yukito and says, “Have him confined to my hut for the day. Perhaps he’ll feel more willing to talk afterwards.”

“ _What_?!” She can’t _do_ that! That’s not just kidnapping, that’s fucking _captivity_!

There are more protests burning on Yasha’s tongue when, suddenly, a pair of meaty hands hook him beneath the armpits. Abruptly, he’s jerked to his feet—a glance over his shoulders proves that the culprits are giant men built like horses, their bloodied and bruised faces making them look outright ghastly. All around, the crowd draws back, their wariness having suddenly returned when it is most convenient to them.

When Yasha’s brain finally kicks into gear, he immediately starts to writhe and kick and spit with everything he can muster, bound as he is. “Let _go_ of me, you assholes!” he snarls as one of the bastards throws him over his broad shoulder like a sack of fucking flour— _again_. God _dammit_. “You sick _bastards_! If you don’t let me go _right now_ , I’ll— I’ll cut off _all_ your fingers and shove them _so_ far up your assholes—”

It doesn’t matter. They carry him away all the same.

* * *

So, here’s the current situation:

Guards posted outside the entrance and revolving every few hours. Yasha knows. He fucking kept track. It was one of the few things he could do to stave off the mind-numbing boredom that comes from being locked in a place for hours on end.

Simple hut. Small and cramped, all wooden walls and claustrophobia. No trace of electricity or modern technology. A deep dip in the floor where ashes collect, because apparently no one ever told the owner that keeping a firepit inside a wooden building was a bad fucking idea.

Daylight dimming beyond the windows. Craning his neck for a better look rewards him with a sky blushing lilac. Amber sears against the distant horizon. Shadows stretch long and heavy and darker with every moment. The approach of twilight makes him bite the inside of his cheek.

Hunger gnawing at his belly. Breakfast this morning had been light. A necessary sacrifice he finds himself seriously regretting now. With the approach of evening and no reprieve in sight, he could eat a fucking _horse_ if it would make his stomach stop growling.

Chafed wrists. Bruised knuckles. Throat soar from screaming obscenities that fell on deaf ears. Discomfort in his joints from behind stuck in this position for so long. Feet falling asleep. It sucks.

As Yasha proceeds to take stock of his surroundings for the umpteenth time—a simple futon, a couple tatami mats, some primitive-looking cookware stashed in the corner, a woven curtain hanging over the doorway, the aforementioned firepit, nothing he hasn’t memorized at this point—he catches conversation drifting in from the outside. At first, he writes it off as another changing of the guards, two more bastards arriving to replace the previous pair at the door and help maintain this unlawful captivity that he’s been forced into. But then he catches the creak of old miko’s voice in the conversation and he perks up, straining to hear more.

Apprehension tickles his belly, mixing with low-thrumming anger, as he eyes the curtain. A crack of amber daylight pours in from where it hovers just an inch above the ground. The murmurs are low and guarded and too soft to make out, but seriousness steeps every syllable.

_Must be talking about what they’re gonna do to me..._

And really, what the hell do they even _want_ with him, anyway? Self-defense aside, he hasn’t done anything to warrant being tied up like this! ...not that these people were particularly _sane_ to begin with.

Footsteps crunch a retreat. Yasha straightens as he catches a shadow passing over the floor, a shape crossing the curtain before disappearing. Were those the guards? Were they being dismissed?

Sure enough, when the curtain is brushed aside, it’s none other than Old Lady Cyclops who hobbles inside, a slow sort of purpose in her gait. Fresh anger rises up in his throat at the sight of her, and he again finds himself wishing that his hands were free enough to flip her the bird. If not punch away the carefully neutral expression maintained on her wrinkled face (and no, he is not beneath punching an old lady, judge him all you like). But as the curtain falls closed behind her, shadows deepen within the walls and cast a grey veil that only seems to make helplessness bite all the more keenly. Whether he likes it or not, he is tied up, bereft of ways to defend himself, and very much aware that he is at her cruel mercy because of it.

When she stops in front of him, peering down at him with her single eye, it feels almost like she’s leveling him with a test of some kind. He turns a glare over to the wall and begins to fantasize about the ways to bring this despicable hut crashing down in a mess of splintered timber and debris.

“Have you calmed down yet?” The question is posed with an even neutrality that makes him bristle.

“Keh,” is the only answer he gives her.

That earns a soft exhale from her nose, followed by the slow shuffle of footsteps. A glance in his periphery shows her approaching the corner where her cookware lays. As she lowers herself down to her knees, he swears he can hear every creak and groan from deep in her aching bones.

Silence thickens in the minutes that pass. He maintains his glare at the wall and continues to invoke fantasies of violent retribution. Likewise, the old hag makes no further attempts to communicate, simply going about her business as though he didn’t exist. Something about the mutual refusal to acknowledge the other strikes Yasha as oddly comforting, in some weird way.

From his periphery, he catches her lighting a fire in the pit, coaxing veins of amber flame to life from the pitch-black charcoal. Once it gains enough strength, the warm orange light smears itself across the walls in a declaration of war against the approaching twilight. Metal scrapes as a stew pot is set up over the flickering fire, suspended by crisscrossing beams that hold it suspended. Dull thuds of ingredients falling in, burble of water being poured. The rhythmic clanging of a stirring ladle. Before long, the air is heavy with the mouthwatering aroma of a hot meal.

“I imagine that you’re hungry.” A fleeting glance shows Old Lady Cyclops bowed intently over the pot, her profile made stark against the oncoming shadows by the firelight. Steam pours out, steady and white and wispy. Shadows pool in the wrinkled crevices of her withered face. “Starving you is rather unsightly, so how about this: I release you, you behave, and we have a civil conversation over dinner. Sound fair?”

Expletives burn on the tip of Yasha’s tongue, venomous and smoldering and waiting to be set free. Just as he opens his mouth to fire them off—his stomach rumbles its betrayal.

His ears heat. Her chuckle rumbles through the room, raspy and tinged with amusement. “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’, then.”

The ropes around his ankles are the first to be undone, her hands gnarled but steady as she loosens the knot that keeps them in place. He watches her movements from his periphery, thinking back to the dog girl and her scarlet-clad body, limp against a verdant background—again, he wonders if she was ever in his position. If she, too, was released by the very people who held her captive, lulled into a false sense of security before her corpse was pinned to that tree like a message to all who wander across it. If someone will burst out from nowhere, bow drawn back near to the point of snapping and an arrow that will drive home into his chest, punch clean through his ribs and still his beating heart.

Then, suddenly, his wrists are freed, too. Yasha scarcely has time to massage the chafed skin there—crimson and angry, rough and not-quite-bleeding—before a steaming bowl and chopsticks are suddenly shoved into his hands. Chunks of indiscernible meat bob in a thick brown rue. The aroma immediately has his mouth watering.

No time is wasted. He has no idea what it is or what’s in it, but it hardly matters. The food is hot, and fresh, and decidedly the best thing he’s ever tasted after an entire day of starvation and half the bowl is down his gullet before it occurs to him, distantly, that it might not be an innocent olive branch.

He chokes on a mouthful of broth, eyes widening at the jarring thought. Oh shit, why didn’t he think of that _sooner_? These people tied him up and locked him up in a hut for god knows what reason, and before that there were men threatening to shoot him dead. And here he is, not even thinking twice about accepting food from his captors! Gods, he is so fucking _stupid_.

_Okay, shit. Okay. What do I do? You’re supposed to induce vomiting, right? Wait, how the fuck do you even do that? Stick fingers down your throat or some shit? Wait, would— Would that even help right now, or is it too late? Fuck, why didn’t I **watch** her mix the damn stew?!_

While Yasha hastily tries to remember protocol for ingesting toxic substances, the old woman spares him a curious glance. Accusation must show plainly on his face, because her expression grows slack with exasperation, and a weary sigh leaves her. Like _he’s_ being the unreasonable one. Unbelievable!

A chunk of meat is caught between her chopsticks, and she raises it for him to see. Then, with a slow and spiteful deliberateness, she plops it into her mouth. Chews. Swallows. Raises a brow.

Nothing happens.

“It is not poisoned,” she concludes, going back to her meal.

_Oi! **You’re** the one who tied me up and threw powder in my face! ‘Scuse me for bein’ a little **cautious**._

But she’s stopped paying attention to him and his indignation, now. There’s only a vague watchfulness in her single eye, the occasional glide of her gaze in his direction—otherwise, she tries to maintain a level of disinterest. Certainly not how she would act if she were waiting keenly for him to start spitting blood and keel over on her floor and then cackle her satisfaction to the grim twilight.

...maybe the stew _is_ safe.

Panic calms into a low and mellow caution. He turns back to his bowl, but forces himself to eat slower. For all he knows, she could have slipped something into his bowl, and his bowl alone, when he wasn’t paying attention. Or she’s built up an immunity. Gods know.

“You’re awfully quiet now,” she muses, suddenly, as she gives her bowl a lethargic stir with the chopsticks. “Is your throat sore, perhaps? The guards told me you were shouting your lungs out up until a few hours ago.”

His left brow twitches. That sounds a _hell_ of a lot like someone making fun of him. Sure, there’s something in the delivery that _could_ be interpreted as a mild and detached concern—but remember. _She’s_ the reason he was locked in this thrice-damned hut all day in the first place. So screw her. Screw her and her faltering attempt at humor and her trying to make him feel a little less threatened. Screw her all the way to hell.

Then, a wry smirk pulls at the old biddy’s chapped mouth and, her gaze warming with amusement, she goes on, “I’m told that your insults were _quite_ creative.”

 _Definitely_ making fun of him.

Yasha’s teeth clack audibly as he snaps his jaw shut, a growl barely stifled in his throat. The _glare_ he shoots her way is laden with enough venom that, with any luck, she’ll keel over and croak and her soul will drift down to hell where it belongs.

To his great misfortune, Old Lady Cyclops does not keel over and croak. But something shifts on her face, just then. Something brief but intense that catches him off-guard and is gone before he even has the chance to decipher it.

The chopsticks slip neatly free from her slackened grip and land primly in the bowl.

While he wavers, perplexed by this sudden change in her behavior, she lowers her bowl to the floor. “...glare at me like that again.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it.”

Bewilderment clouds common sense, and Yasha finds himself reluctantly complying. He doubts his recreation is perfect, because it’s hard to glare daggers when confusion offsets anger.

But whatever she saw before, she sees it again. It causes her breath to hitch in her throat, and has her gaze _scraping_ across his face with a sudden intensity that it lacked before, like a rusty blade dragging across his skin. And then, abruptly, her gnarled hand reaches out to snag him by the chin and tugs him forward.

“Now try to look more intelligent.”

“Fucking _excuse_ me?” he snaps, wrenching himself free of her grip. It isn’t strong, calloused fingertips trembling over his jaw as though fearful of making contact. Still, it’s too close, and he smacks her hand away.

She doesn’t even seem to notice, the intensity of her gaze neither faltering or abating. What the _hell_? Like, people don’t usually have this kind of reaction to having daggers glared at them. Hell, Souta has often said that if looks could kill, Yasha would be wanted for the most violent murders in history. _Very_ few people are immune, and _no_ one reacts like _this_. _This_ is fucking _weird_.

Eventually, after just long enough has passed for discomfort to revisit, the crone shakes herself out of whatever stupor overcame her. With a trembling inhale drawn through her nostrils, she draws back, her face a little too pale. “Great gods in the heavens above...”

Wary confusion momentarily displaces his indignation. “What?” he rasps (and okay, yes, his throat is still sore, fuck off). “What’s wrong?”

“I— Forgive me.” She gives herself a little shake, then reaches back down for her bowl. Warily, Yasha notes that her hands are a touch less steady than they were a moment ago. “For a moment, you looked like— ...like someone I knew. From... a long time ago.”

_Okay...?_

Not quite sure what to do with that, he turns back to his own bowl. All the steam has gone, and the stew is lukewarm. Well, shit.

While he tries to recover his appetite, the old woman clears her throat. Her composure is shakier than before, but regained nonetheless. “I suppose an introduction is rather overdue. My name is Kaede. I am the miko of this village, and keeper of its shrine.”

_Lady, I don’t give a flying fuck if you’re Princess Kaguya come down from the goddamn moon. I just want to get the hell **out** of here!_

His lack of a response earns a patient frown. “You realize you’re not going to get anywhere unless you talk to me. That much, I can promise you.”

Yasha says nothing. Narrows his eyes over the lip of the bowl, and says nothing.

A sigh droops free of her, and she looks down at her own bowl as though searching for an answer. “In any case, I must apologize for the rough way you were treated. You might not believe it, and it likely does not absolve me, but it was necessary.”

“Keh!” Necessary his _ass_!

“I know how it must sound.” To her credit, the smile that cracks across her face seems apologetic enough. Not that he’s inclined to trust it, no matter how genuine it may seem at first glance. “But you have to understand—though our village is a peaceful place _now_ , that was not always the case. Those who are old enough to remember it are paranoid. Those who have heard it from the mouths of their parents and grandparents are no less so. And I, unfortunately, have the difficult task of placating fears that are often unfounded. And so... sometimes such thorough measures must be taken.”

His chopsticks scrape the ceramic bottom.

Without missing a beat, Old Lady Cyclops (Kaede? nah, “Old Lady Cyclops” suits her better) turns to where the pot remains suspended over the crackling fire, hazy steam rising up from the bubbling broth. Oh, it still smells _so good_. “Would you like seconds... Yasha, was it?”

Indignation flares in him, and he says nothing. He says absolutely nothing. He is _not_ going to let himself be bribed by the promise of food.

...that being said—

Let’s make one thing absolutely clear here—Yasha is _starving_. There’s a gnawing hollowness in his belly that threatens to devour him whole, and the warm broth actually feels marvelous against his sore throat. So when he huffs and thrusts his bowl out, glowering pointedly, it means nothing. Absolutely nothing. It is a not an acquiescence or an acknowledgement of her “generosity”. And anyone who says otherwise is a fucking _liar_. Got it?

To his annoyance, the old woman cracks a damn smile at that. But she dumps a particularly generous helping into his bowl, so he chooses to ignore it. For now.

After that, she decides to shut her trap and let him eat, which he _refuses_ to appreciate. Because again, he’s been kidnapped and held here against his will for a _solid day_. So the silence that beats out, almost smothering in its weight, is _completely_ welcome. Not uncomfortable in the _slightest_. Not awkward in a way it wasn’t before. He is _perfectly_ content with it!

Perfectly. Content.

Yasha sets his chopsticks down and scowls. “Where am I?”

Credit where credit is due, the old hag doesn’t lord her “victory” over him and merely hums. “A small village in Musashi.”

“Where the fuck is _Musashi_?” Of all the subjects that don’t make him want to blow his brains out, geography is the one at which he excels. He isn’t a fucking virtuoso or anything, but he knows his regions and prefectures, and “Musashi” doesn’t ring any bells.

Actually—no. Scratch that. A memory itches at the back of his mind. A classmates poking him in the shoulder during history class...

“It’s a province on the east edge of Honshu,” Old Lady Cyclops replies placidly.

_Huh?_

“Prefecture,” Yasha corrects.

“Pardon?”

“You said ‘province’. But... you mean ‘prefecture’, right?” His confusion meets hers, and his face folds itself into a frown. Just how old _is_ this lady, to be making a mistake like that? “Japan hasn’t had any provinces since—”

Yasha stops, the words “Meiji Restoration” still brimming on his tongue, as the puzzle pieces suddenly make themselves known. They draw together of their own free will, slow to the point of mocking, flashing each damning snippet of evidence as the full picture arranges itself in bright and burning color.

Antiquated clothes and hairstyles. Dirt smudged liberally across shoeless feet and gaunt faces alike. Medieval pronunciations of Japanese. Men hunting for food out in the woods with bows and arrows. A crone dressed as a miko, deferred to as a leader. Patchy huts instead of buildings. Woodland where the shrine should be. Provinces instead of prefectures.

Something clicks. Then breaks.

The bowl nearly slips out of his hand. “Oh _son of a bitch_.”

Old Lady Cyclops straightens in alarm. “What? What’s the matter?”

Her words are deafened by the hysteria pounding through him. Shakily, he lowers the bowl to the floor. Crazily enough, there’s this distant awareness of the fact that spilling hot stew all over his lap would hurt like a bitch. And that’s one thing he really doesn’t want to deal with, on top of everything else, because he’s—

He’s—

“I’m in the fucking past,” Yasha realizes aloud. “I’m in the— Gramps, you _bastard_! All those stupid legends and not fucking _once_ did you mention goddamn _time-travel_!”

“I... I beg your pardon?”

“This is just _great_! Fucking _fantastic_!” He rakes his hands over his face, fingers tangling deep into his hair. The tug of pressure at his scalp alerts him that this is not, in fact, a crazy dream or a hallucination. You don’t feel pain in dreams. This is real. This is happening. This is _fucking happening_. “Time-travel, centipede-demons, dog-girl corpses, being held captive by a one-eyed hag—”

“Now that is very rude,” scolds the one-eyed hag, “and frankly uncalled for.”

“—could this day fucking _get_ any worse?!”

And then a great, thundering crash reverberates from outside. Because of fucking _course_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even fucking know what I'm doing.
> 
> I??? Guess I'm in this fandom now??? I managed to watch the entire anime and all the movies and I'm still slogging through the manga (fuck me, this series is so long), and I'm a slut for role-reversals and I couldn't help myself.
> 
> Translations and explanations for people who aren't familiar with the terms:  
> Goshinboku = Sacred Tree  
> Hakama = old-fashioned garment worn around the waist best described as a split skirt; most varieties resemble loose and baggy pants  
> Honshu = the largest, and main, island of the archipelago that makes up Japan  
> Kannushi = Shinto priest  
> Miko = Shinto priestess/shrine maiden  
> Ofuda = paper talismans utilized in Shintoism to dispel evil (also called sutras)  
> Torii gate = the iconic red gates that stand in front of Shinto shrines  
> Sakaki tree = a type of flowering evergreen tree native to Japan and considered to be sacred in Shinto faith  
> Sessha = an auxiliary shrine, smaller and detached from the main shrine  
> Shimenawa = a string of zigzag-shaped paper charms that wards off evil  
> Yaksha = nature spirits from Hindu and Buddhist mythology, pronounced in Japanese as "yasha"
> 
> Cultural notes:  
> Musashi is a historical province that encompasses what is now Tokyo Metropolis, most of the Saitama Prefecture, and part of the Kanagawa Prefecture. During the Meiji Era (1868-1912), the old province system was replaced by the prefecture system used in modern-day Japan.
> 
> Comments, questions, and constructive criticism are appreciated!
> 
> Sincerely,  
> Tsuki


	2. The Girl Who Was Just Overcome

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW warnings for blood, gore, and a brief description of dead insect parts

Yasha’s left eye twitches. “Oh. My god.”

It is a true testament to the sheer tenacity of his sanity that it can not only tolerate, but comprehend, the sight before him. Because seriously, if _this_ isn’t the definition of insanity, then he has no idea what is.

A nearby horse lying on its side, twitching through death throes and eyes rolling wildly, a great bloody hole torn from its flank like someone carved a red cave into its flesh. Rooftops caught in the shadows of great serpentine arches, all looping maroon carapace and countless insect legs twitching in an undulating pattern. Woman’s torso, uncovered breasts hanging loose off the chest and skin so white it seems to glow against the twilit sky. Black mane billowing turbulently around a moonlike face, arrows and spears alike soaring through the air but none of them making contact. Five too-long arms jutting out from stacking shoulders like crooked bones, spidery hands drenched dark with blood.

One stump, torn bloodlessly at the elbow.

Unbidden, the dark, earthen bottom of the well flashes through his mind. The limp not-an-arm, lifeless and still and bone-white. Twitching fingers. He swallows.

Glorious chaos reigns all around them. The village seems to crumble like old paper beneath careless fingertips, as though the only thing holding it together suddenly disappeared. Huts that once stood modest but stalwart find themselves splintered and broken and in shattered pieces across the ground. Roofs not taken clean off bear a partial inward crush telltale of something too-heavy and serpentine gliding across them, and walls buckle where a sinuous body crashed into them carelessly as it dragged itself across the earth. Deep furrows have been carved deep into the ground as evidence of where the monster rampaged to its heart’s content, winding in so many places that it looks almost as though the trails are knotting around themselves. Horses whinny high and sharp as they flee, hooves tearing up great clots of soil in their wake. Shrieking chickens duck into half-collapsing buildings.

Screams pierce the air, panicked cries of “Mononoke!” forming a terrified chorus. Wild-eyed men scurry about as they frantically grab hold of whatever weapon is nearest, gripping it so tight until their knuckles turn white in their desperation. An array of spears and arrows and even torches are raised against the monster, along with a variety of beaten-up farming equipment that looks as though it’s seen better days. Lit torches burn amber against a plum-colored sky. Meanwhile, women lead the evacuation, snatching the elderly by the arm and scooping children up as they run for their lives.

All the while, the creature twists and turns—and then whirls around so fast it leaves Yasha dizzy. A long strip of red flesh dangles from her fanged mouth. Her bulbous eyes catch him, burning.

Disbelief slides into place, swift and innocuous and a precious shield against madness. It whispers deceptively that this cannot be the same creature that held him prisoner in a bony, bruising grip while they tumbled together from a starlit void. No, that creature could have taken a chunk out of him if she wanted to, but didn’t. There was foul breath fanning across his skin, giant eyes capturing his reflection, crimson lips parting around yellow fangs longer than his fingers. If she wanted to kill him, then she would have, but didn’t.

This thing, now, is a grim portrait of living death. Unhesitating, unrelenting, completely without mercy. If they were truly one in the same, he would be dead by now.

 _I’m dreaming_ , Yasha thinks, stupidly.

Everything seems to slow as though swimming through lacquered sap. Movement rolls lethargically through centipede-lady as she lowers herself to the ground, inching forward little-by-little by little. That strip of flesh hanging from her jaws is released, splattering wetly across the floor.

The world breaks free of itself, reality taking a step back and grabbing him along with it. Some distant and hysteric part of him is screaming at him to run—it’s well-aware that the monster slithers forward much faster than a snail’s pace, and that his perception is just fucking him over. It wails at him to move, because if he doesn’t, he’ll be flattened beneath that heavy, sinuous body, or punctured to death by the multitudes of twitching insect legs, or ripped to shreds by her enormous fangs. But is just so numb and distant and stiff, as though all the bones in his body have become cement. There’s a thumping in his ears that might be his heart, or it someone’s voice shouting his name, and he can’t seem to move, even though he can feel something close hard around his shoulder—

Clarity, for just a moment. Snapshot of impossibly-wide jaws, five arms arched overhead like a scorpion’s tail, was she always that close—

“ _Move_ , child!”

And then Yasha finds himself _wrenched_ to one side. A blur of motion _rips_ past. Stinging wind slaps him across the face, tears at his hair and forces him to throw his arm up to keep his eyes from watering.

He’s dizzied when stillness returns. His ears roar with the echo of motion, his heartbeat a dull and heady din. And somewhere in the blurry distance, words rake at his awareness, faraway and unimportant.

“Lady Kaede!”

Vaguely, Yasha takes note of the approaching smudge. It might be a man, hazy and blurry against the whirl of pandemonium, but it’s hard to be sure. Urgency sharpens every movement, and one moment he’s far away and the next he’s staggering to a stop in front of them. Chest heaving, dark eyes, grimness in every line on his face. The newcomer stares intently at the space next to Yasha, like how a sinner might size up a god to see if they can offer him salvation.

“None of our weapons are working,” the man— _Eijirou_ , Yasha’s brain supplies dimly, _the asshole who ambushed me in the forest_ —reports frantically.

Spears and arrows whistle in the background, wooden bullets that fail to make their mark. Each are dodged and ducked with an inhuman deftness, great lengths of carapace tearing up the ground as they come to coil around a single point. And this is too real to be a dream, which means that this is actually happening. This is actually happening and the monster they’re fighting isn’t some figment of his imagination and that means—

“She fucking followed me,” Yasha hears himself mutter.

“What did you say?”

Suddenly, he becomes aware of Old Lady Cyclops at his side, her presence stolid and grim as a stone broaching the wild surface of foaming rapids. Shadows deepen in the determined wrinkles on her face, paint darkness across the tension of her furrowed brow and beneath the sharp, solemn line that her mouth has become. One gnarled hand has a firm grip on his shoulder as though for balance. A great bow is clutched in her free hand, longer than she is tall, while a quiver laden in old arrows is slung over her drooping shoulder. An urgent confusion has sharpened her single eye as it drills into him.

Centipede-lady rears back around, twisting and arching up over the ground. Silhouette cutting the hazy orange sunset behind her. A crimson smear dripping down her chin, paints the column of her alabaster neck. Jaw stretched wide to the point of dislocation, fangs jutting a warning. Five remaining arms, spread out wide like a ribcage splitting open. One of them is missing.

A sharp, hysterical laugh breaks in his throat. “She’s pissed ‘cause I took off her arm.”

“Boy, what are you _talking_ about?” the old hag demands.

“Look out!” someone shouts.

This time, when centipede-lady’s body ripples, she doesn’t dive. There’s a terrible groan as her insectoid body drags across the ground, rumbles and lifts and falls and rises. Dimly, Yasha thinks back to the torii gate at the front of his family’s shrine, the stalwart arch blaring red against the sky—he looks at the rising loop of maroon carapace and he thinks, incredulously, _That isn’t what a torii gate is supposed to look like_.

Someone catches him by the elbow and tugs him away. The coil comes crashing down in the place where he once stood.

Shouting for him to be careful, but he can barely hear. The reverberations leave him stumbling. Dust billows through the air in a great beige cloud. He has to hold his breath to keep from swallowing it down. Grit stings his eyes.

Now the monster is no more than a smudge to his blurry vision. Vaguely, he can make out the way she’s angled downwards, like she intends to lunge forward and tear headlong into her target like a bullet through someone’s skull. Arms stretched out in a way that reminds him of a claw machine at the arcade as it gets ready to cage in anything that gets close enough. Even with the distance, her gaze sears.

“Give it to me!” comes the hiss, low and deadly and rasping. “The Shikon-no-Tama—give it here!”

Everything is surreal and helium-weightless and hysteria humming against his heartbeat. “That multilegged bitch followed me from the fucking well...”

Motion in his periphery. Old Lady Cyclops bends back that enormous bow with a shocking strength, the long arrow nocked into place unforgivingly rigid. Her face is unyielding stone, her gnarled grip amazingly firm. The bowstring quivers in anticipation next to her cheek. Yasha wonders how she can aim with only one eye.

“You’ll find no such thing here, mononoke!” she declares, with a note of something like grim triumph. “The Shikon-no-Tama is long gone from this world!”

Yasha’s vision clears just in time to make out the monster’s fanged sneer. “ _Give it to me_!”

Another rush of movement. This time, he finds himself on the ground without prompting. Dirt presses against his cheek and the palms of his hands as the monster barrels unstopping overhead. Another high-octane rush of wind screams overhead—he makes the mistake of looking up and witnesses the shadow of her impossibly long body rushing him like a great dark river. The tips of her countless insect legs narrowly graze his scalp.

_Fuuuuuuuck._

An eternity comes and goes before she’s gone. Another before a hand hooks him beneath the armpit and hauls him roughly to his feet. “Are you alright?” is tossed sharply in his direction. He hears himself reply with a garbled, “Fuck, shit, oh _fuck_.”

Old Lady Cyclops and her broad, sagging back imposes itself in front of him. “Yasha,” she says, unnaturally calm for all the insanity breaking loose around them, “I want you to find a hut to hide in right now. Don’t come out until I find you. Do you understand?”

Something seems to click, then. This is three times, now, that this thing has aimed at him. Not the old crone, or that asshole Eijirou, or any of the other villagers who scramble all around them. Him.

This monster didn’t just haul the length of her scaly body through the forest surrounding this village just for kicks. Just like how she didn’t burst out of the well for no reason, didn’t drag him down into that starlit abyss just for the fun of it. He hadn’t even done anything yet—hadn’t torn off her arm and given her any reason to kill him—but she’d come after him anyway. Just like how she ran her slimy tongue over his cheek rather than take a chunk out of his belly.

For whatever reason, she’s after _him_.

...and the crone wants him to fucking _hide_?!

“Fuck _that_!” he snaps, tearing himself free from the lax grip on his wrist and immediately spins on his heel, feet moving faster than his mouth. “I’m gettin’ outta here!”

“Wait a minute, where are you—Yasha? _Yasha_!”

* * *

Deep in the woods, she gasps awake.

There’s a searing pressure between her ribs. It anchors her firmly in place, unyielding and unforgiving and spearing her through. No blood wells up around the wound, as though her body doesn’t even recognize that her flesh has been breached and her bones bypassed and that her heart shouldn’t be a stagnant weight in her chest.

Movement twitches through aching muscles. Not enough room, a tight constriction around her limbs that make every squirming attempt at freedom an act of futility. Only her right arm deigns to obey her, having somehow escaped being trapped by the wooden snare. Her spine is forced into a ramrod-straight line against the trunk, rough bark grating against her shoulder blades. The familiar rhythm of her heartbeat has been replaced by an unnerving silence. And all the while, that pressure against her chest threatens to crush, until it feels as though her ribcage is creaking and her lungs are going to collapse any second. White fletching bobs in her swimming vision.

_Ugh... What **happened** to me?_

It all comes back in a burning rush, then. Arrow, hissing through the sky. Beads, slipping from her fingers. Dark eyes, devoid of pity.

Rage throbs. _That traitorous—_

The air shifts. She breathes in deep. Her stomach clenches as it nears, no more than an approaching murmur on the breeze, but painfully recognizable nonetheless. The very same woody, smoky scent that she once anticipated giddily, back when she was utterly blind to the deception hidden behind thin-lipped smiles and thawed-out glances.

Shadows deepen. Leaves whisper. Her eyes narrow.

 _He’s_ coming.

* * *

It’s a really, really, _really_ good thing that Yasha’s on the track team.

“ _Why are you following me_?!” he screams at his pursuer. He knows better than to turn around while sprinting at full-tilt, but he doesn’t need to. The rumble of her great body dragging across the earth reverberates beneath his feet, roars over the throb of his pulse in his ears. Even without looking, he can feel her right at his heels.

So the inhuman snarl that answers him is more confirmation than anything else. “Give me the Shikon-no-Tama!”

“ _I don’t fucking know what that is_!”

How long he’s been running and how much distance he’s put between himself and the village by now, he doesn’t know. Can’t know without turning around—which again, not a good idea when running at full-tilt. All that matters right now is getting the hell away from here.

If only he could keep this up indefinitely, then it wouldn’t be an issue. But he can’t. An ache started building in his lungs some time ago, has only grown more intense each panting breath until it feels like his ribcage has been set aflame. Air blisters the inside of his throat as he exhales harshly, inhales with a desperation. Sweat drips into his eyes until he’s not sure he can see straight. The roar of adrenaline can’t fully blot out the throbbing pain that’s mounting in his leg muscles. His heart feels like it’s going to burst out of him at any minute.

Endurance is not the issue. He’s the fastest on the team, the one who crosses the finish line first and smirks when his competition arrives out of breath. But if he keeps this pace up, it won’t be long before his only-human body collapses in an exhausted sprawl.

But he also can’t _stop_. If he stops, then she catches him. And if she catches him—

_Don’t think about that. Just fucking **run**._

In a rare show of the universe’s mercy, the forest he came through before crests the horizon then. In that moment, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more beautiful than that stolid and verdant tree line. Relief bleeds into fierce determination. He grits his teeth, wringing out what little strength he has left to speed up.

The canopy crushes him beneath its immense emerald shadow. He swallows triumphant laughter.

Just as well—the forest is not the same as was this morning. Before, a vague comfort allowed him to relax into the golden-touched air, drink deep from the rich and loamy air. Undergrowth was no more than a distant annoyance, then. Vague beauty blurred at every edge, too shy to announce itself but just vain enough to linger. It was like the home of a distant acquaintance who invited you in for tea, though you knew each other only in passing.

But now everything is alien and wild and hostile. Gone is that tenderness, that cordiality that lingered on the fringes, replaced by a vehement desire to see him leave this world in the most violent way possible. Bitterness makes jagged lines out of each and every tree, as though regret upon regret upon regret were rising up to choke him in on all sides. Angry snares of bushes rustle their discontentment. Low-hanging branches sweep out at unforgiving angles. Stray roots crop up with malicious intent. Ferns slap at his heels like a bitter parting. Darkness overruns the ground at his feet like an infestation. The canopy is a black, sprawling thing that strives to blot out every trace of the now deep plum-colored sky. Acrimony sings through the air, thick enough to choke on and loud enough drown out his heartbeat. This is not the distant acquaintance who offers you tea—this is a friend whose closeness you’ve lost, a bond you once believed to be unbreakable until betrayal carved you bloodily apart.

Panic wells up in his throat. Why did he think this would be a good idea, dammit?! This place was already unfamiliar in broad daylight, and the approach of nightfall has made it into a labyrinth. He’s never going to find a way out here! He’s—

Somewhere behind him, trees groan as they fight the monster plowing through them.

 **_Fuck_ ** _my life!_

Then, blessing of all blessings, the Goshinboku rears itself into his view, far too proud to be contained by the lowly canopy. Reluctant hope stutters to life between Yasha’s ribs. If the enormous sakaki tree is here, that means the well is close. And if the well is how he came here, then maybe if he just jumps back in—

A stray root catches his foot.

All at once, the forest floor is rushing to meet him with a spiteful glee. Curses spill out into the night as the world devolves into a dizzying tumble. He doesn’t remember the slope being here before, but gravity is an uncaring bitch and he’s rolling headlong down the steep angle before he can even process what’s happened. From there, it’s all an incoherent blur of soft earth and hard roots and jabbing twigs.

When it stops, there’s grass in his mouth, sore spots where he can feel fresh bruises coming, and he’s landed rather roughly on his belly. A groan breaks in his throat. _Third time today._ _Universe fucking has somethin’ against me._

“Wow,” comes a new voice, and he immediately jolts upright, “ _that_ was graceless.”

Slowly, Yasha raises his eyes. He’s sprawled between a great fork of roots thicker than his hand is large, their wooden snare breaking apart the soft earth like conquerors subduing a foreign nation. The Goshinboku looms over him with an enormity that he never remembers it possessing before, as though its massive trunk could really reach up to spear the heavens open through willpower alone. Sakaki branches spread out overhead, cast a deep and dark shroud over everything that dares to fall under its jurisdiction. Rebellious roots arch up at impossible, twisting angles to constrict the trunk in defiance of their master, so it looks as though the tree were at war with itself. Scarlet cloth and silver hair alike blare beneath the tangle.

Except—

Last he’d seen her, Dog Girl was slack against the tree bark. Head slumped to one side, limbs loose, eyes fluttered closed. Peaceful in a somnolent death.

But now, her neck is strained and tight as it lifts her head up, face turned in such a way that her cheek is flashed almost in disdain. Haughtiness shows in the harsh tilt of her chin, her nose thrust into the air as though in open disgust. Her lips purse faintly as though fighting back a sneer. There’s a strained touch in her eyelids that indicates they are closed of a conscious will rather than an unconscious one. Color darkens her face were there wasn’t any before. Even though the arrow has not moved, continues to spear right through her heart, breath causes the flesh of her throat to rise and fall, and her left ear gives a single twitch.

His heart lurches. _Hoooooly shit._

If she notices the way his jaw nearly falls off—because she is moving and breathing and talking even though, hours ago, she was _definitely_ dead—then she refuses to acknowledge it. Instead, she goes on, not even bothering to spare him a sideways glance and every word _dripping_ with condescension, “That measly insect is giving _you_ trouble? Has the great and powerful Sesshomaru-sama really fallen so far?”

He _stares_. “How in the mother-loving _fuck_ are you alive?!”

Immediately, her eyes snap open. Without moving, her gaze flashes over to him, her derision finding itself dented by incredulous bewilderment—her irises are a bright and luminous saffron, seem to shimmer against the darkness with some internal light. Narrow, cat-like pupils cut into him. Yeah, _definitely_ not human eyes.

After a moment, the haughtiness slips clean from her face. She turns to face him fully, eyes widening with dumb shock. “Who are _you_?”

Something in her tone rankles him, and Yasha bristles on instinct. “Hey, at least _I_ don’t have an _arrow_ stickin’ outta me! Seriously, _how are you alive_?!”

She doesn’t seem to hear him. Her brows knit together like she’s trying desperately to make herself understand the impossible. “But... But you _smell_ —”

Whatever else she was going to say gets lost in the too-close crash of trees in the distance. Fresh panic ignites. Yasha scrambles to his feet and _runs_.

Or tries to, anyway. But his body chooses _that_ moment to pay him back for his earlier abuse, and exhaustion crashes over him in an inexorable wave. Burning pain seizes at his lung and throat until he’s gasping. An ache carves through his legs, leaves them weak and boneless and trembling as he struggles just to stand upright. Oh no.

The shudder that goes through the bushes is the only warning he gets before Centipede-lady explodes into the clearing. Trees topple in the wake of her winding body, which surges through the shadows in a ripple of maroon death. The unnatural whiteness of her human torso blares against his vision, offset by the black tangle of her hair that rises from her shoulders like a smoggy halo. Head down, shoulders bowed, arms curled in close to her belly, spine arching to the air—he’s reminded of a viper just about to strike. Her mouth is stretched open to the point where he finds himself wondering dizzily if she can dislocate her jaw and swallow her prey whole.

_Aw shit._

There’s no time for fear to crash over him again before she _lunges_.

On instinct, he ducks, dropping to the ground and throwing his hands over his head and bowing behind the massive shelter of the nearest tangled root. She sails overhead in a gust of screaming wind and rushing shadow. Okay, if he runs now, maybe he can—

But then she loops her way around the tree in a wide arc. When she comes around again, all but glowing against the shadows and arms flung out menacingly, she has him circled in a living noose. The trail of her carapace-laden body forms a physical wall at his back, insect legs undulating up and down to discourage him from ducking under. Even if he had the strength to vault over—which he doesn’t, everything _hurts_ and even _breathing_ seems to make his legs _ache_ —he’s also boxed in by roots. By the time he even moves to navigate his way to freedom, she’ll rip him open.

He’s _trapped_.

From her grin, it’s clear that she planned this. A shudder—of anticipation or pleasure, it’s hard to tell—travels down her spine as she draws nearer. “Now, boy, give me the Shikon-no-Tama!”

Dog Girl’s amber gaze snaps over to him, suddenly sharp. “You have the Shikon-no-Tama?”

“ _How_ many times do I hafta say I have _no fucking clue_ _what that means_?!”

“I can _smell_ it on you!” Centipede-lady snarls as she lunges—

And then suddenly darts back with a hiss.

If she’d been any slower, the series of arrows that come spearing through the air would have punched through her flesh. As it is, they wedge themselves deep into the tree instead. A few narrowly miss Dog Girl’s suspended toes, her snared legs, her single unbound arm.

“Yasha!” Old Lady Cyclops’s voice has him turning in bewilderment. She’s perched atop a dusky stallion, a bow and arrow-laden quiver thrown valiantly over his shoulder as a small mob of villagers gathers at the hooves of her mount. Torchlight casts urgent shadows across her wrinkled face. “Are you alright?”

Incredulity blazes through him as he scans the smattering of grim-faced men, picking out those whose faces are still busted from his assault against them. _What the— They didn’t... come to **rescue** me, did they?_

No. Don’t be stupid. No one in their right mind would go so far as to risk their lives against a flesh-eating monster for a perfect stranger. Much less a stranger they were thoroughly convinced was a demon just hours ago, and left ugly bruises to blossom blue-black-purple across their faces. A stranger that screamed profanities of every color and hue under the sun at the top of his lungs while he was hoisted over some burly asshole’s shoulder. A stranger they were perfectly content to let starve all day in a cramped hut, ankles and wrists chafing from knotted ropes, and leave at the mercy of a grizzled old miko with only one eye. A stranger only said miko took pity on, had the decency to untie him and cook him dinner and—

Shit. The _stew_.

It all makes sense now.

Furious indignation surges forward, eclipses any lingering ache or throbbing that Yasha might feel as he jolts to his feet, spins on his heel, and pins the shifty old bitch underneath his glare. “I _knew_ it! What the _fuck_ did you put in my food, hag?!”

Bewildered shock slackens the one-eyed hag’s face. “I... beg your pardon?”

Playing innocent, is she? “Don’t fuck with me!” he snarls back, which only causes her brows to arch higher on her wrinkled forehead. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought she was genuinely confused. “You mixed in some kinda hallucinogenic mushrooms or shit when I wasn’t fucking looking!”

“I nev— this is _not_ the time or place! Get _over_ here before—”

“ _Bullshit_! You give me _another_ explanation for why there’s a talking corpse—”

Dog Girl flinches back minutely when he jabs his finger roughly in her direction, face slackening with offended indignation, as though she were anything less than what he described her as. Befuddled, Old Lady Cyclops glances over at the tree, and if Yasha were any less incensed right now, he would have noticed the color fleeing from her face.

“—and a fucking half-centipede monster yackin’ about some Whatever-no-Tama—”

Centipede-lady’s eyes narrow dangerously at that remark, lips curling back to flash fang and a low, gravelly hiss vibrating in the back of her throat. The men at the edge of the clearing shift anxiously, a ripple of unease going through them as they tighten their grips on their weapons. Again, Yasha fails to notice, because hysteric fury pulses hot behind his eyes and burns his vision red.

“—‘cause the only thing that makes _sense_ right now is if you fucking _roofied my dinner_ —”

A sudden tickle goes through his insides, and he breaks off, blinking.

Granted, it’s not an explicitly unpleasant sensation—soft and featherlight and noninvasive, not unlike a flutter of nerves in his belly—but the abruptness of it catches him off-guard. There’s also a strange physicality to it, a wispy humming against his hipbone that’s simply too tactile to be his imagination. And then, almost belatedly, comes a faint and almost sickly warmth. Almost like holding your hands over a rotting corpse and feeling the radiation of decomposition warm your palms.

Slowly, Yasha casts his gaze down. Kissing up against the black fabric of his uniform jacket, a muffled glow suffuses his side. Sakura-petal pink, diffuse and radiating. It reminds him of the flash that went off in the starlit void—only this is nestled deep beneath his skin.

“...and now I’m _glowing_.” And if _this_ isn’t what a bad trip feels like, then he has absolutely no idea how it would. “What the _shit_?!”

Movement flashes in his periphery. No time to process, no time to react, no time to—

 _PAIN_!

* * *

Memory blurs, at this point. There’s a scorching pain that burns his mind down to ashes in the wind, that burns through his entire body until there’s hardly anything left. The world becomes a smothering whirl. Distant sensations that come, dull and dizzied. Slipper snippets of blurring imagery.

Rushing air. Echoing screams. Ground lost beneath his feet. Solid impact against his skeleton. Dark tangle of hair. White curve of too many shoulders. Crimson spurt. Blistering _pain_.

Muscles in motion. Hands bracing on foreign shoulders. Heat fluttering within palms. Familiar, mounting pressure—

_LIGHT_

And then Yasha hits the ground. Again.

* * *

Everything is throbbing pain and cold ground and the annoyance of grass poking him in the eye. Yasha clings to the vestiges of awareness, somehow painfully conscious of the fact that he has, yet again, ended up with his face in the dirt.

 _Okay_ , his mind supplies, groggy but furious—and fighting to be heard over the screaming in his side, _that is the fucking **fourth** time today. Seriously, **which** petty-ass god did I piss off?_

Something _thumps_ next to his face, solid and heavy. Four more near-identical impacts follow, more distant than the first and no less vague and his head is roiling too much to properly make out the source. His vision flutters about inconsistently, off-kilter and dizzy. It settles on fuzzy smears that sit on the fringes, creamy-pale against the dark bristles of grass. They’re so very bright against the darkness that they seem to burn against his corneas. Smoke rises in silver, sickly-sweet curls from messily-torn ends. A scent like burnt chalk tickles at the back of his throat.

_The hell?_

Yasha raises his head blearily. He squints through the veil of his bangs until the blur transitions into crisp lines. Spidery wrists, bony fingers, half-bent elbows...

A milky pile of five severed arms.

“ _Ohshit_ ,” he hisses, jolting upright—only to regret it. The wave of agony _sears_ through him, relentless and deafening as the grand finale of a firework show.

Which he does his best to ignore, between the hysteria and the panic thrumming beneath his veins. They force his body into motion, work in tandem to have him scrambling away. He swears that the fingers are still twitching.

Once the distance between himself and the severed limbs stretches dark and wide, he claps a hand over his side. Right above his hip, right where the focal-point of pain radiates burning-white waves. Torn fabric greets him, and a shallow vacuum where solid flesh should be. A sluggish pump of warm-wet-red spills against his palm.

_Shitshitshitfuckmeshitshitshi—_

Prickling grass stabs his other hand as he inches back. There’s soil against his palm, the solidness of narrow roots—and then something impossibly smooth, slippery with wetness.

He looks down. Nestled, primly, in the grass. Sakura-petal pink, vivid as a child’s laughter. Soft glow radiating from the inside out, like a crystallized star. Perfectly round, just large enough to fit neatly into a child’s palm. Dark, bloody smudges smattering a glassy surface.

_Wh— ...is that the— the Shikon-no-thingy?_

There’s no time to ponder it any further. A loop of maroon carapace suddenly catches him by the middle—and before Yasha can even process the ground vanishing beneath him, the sakaki trunk is slamming _hard_ into his spine. Massive insect legs cage him in on either side, and he’s lucky to have avoided being impaled, but the breath is still punched mercilessly from his lungs and it leaves him slumping dizzy.

Through the blur in his head, Centipede-bitch’s sneer is drips red with triumph. “Very clever of you, kannushi, hiding it in your body.”

_The hell...? Wait—is she saying that thing came from **inside** me?!_

“Mukade-jōrō,” Dog Girl growls, straining against the roots binding her in place, the arrow skewering through her heart. Yasha is pinned in such a way that his head is near-level with her upper thigh, and the rustle of scarlet clothing scratches at the tip of his ear. Molten fury smolders in her yellow irises. “If you think you’re going to get away with this—”

“Mukade-jōrō” interrupts her with a sharp, shrill laugh. “And what are you going to do, mutt? Pinned to that tree as you are?”

Dog Girl’s right arm, the only part of her not captured by thick coils of errant roots, ends in a fist balled up so tight that the knuckles have begun to whiten. “You’re lucky I am, otherwise I’d—”

“You’d _what_ , hanyou?”

The word is unfamiliar, but there’s a bitter resonance to it. Something that makes it sting like a slap across the face, cut like a knife to the most vulnerable places. Dog Girl’s jaw clicks shut, a soft and raspy growl vibrating in the back of her throat.

One of Yasha’s arms managed to avoid getting caught when the monster snared him, has a freedom that the other does not. When he tries to shove at the crushing embrace around his middle, though, all he can seem to manage to making the bones in his forearm creak and nothing more. The great rope of carapace doesn’t shift, doesn’t move, doesn’t budge. Fuck.

“Just you wait until Sesshomaru gets here,” says Dog Girl with a soft and chilling calm. He shivers.

With another shrill laugh, the centipede-bitch draws nearer, hovering just close enough that the shadows peel back and let the details of her face come into focus. Hair swirls wild around her face as though gravity has given up on it, and the remains of her arms jut awkwardly out from her torso like broken bones. Black spots on her forehead in place of eyebrows, almost perfectly round and mesmerizing. The flesh at the end of those messy tears looks more like putty than anything solid, curls of errant smoke still rising from them in silvery, burnt-chalk-scented wisps. A crimson-dark stripe paints her chin, drips down the column of her neck, smears across her lips. Revulsion travels down Yasha’s spine as her long pink tongue snakes out to languidly wipe it away.

 _Fuck this! I’m not becoming centipede food, goddammit!_ This time he tries to push at one of the massive insect legs one either side of his face, but that does nothing either. All the while, the tear in his side continues to scream deafeningly. Blood gushes out sluggishly, sticky-hot and drenching his shirt to his skin.

“Oh, _wait_ a minute—I _recognize_ you!”

He flinches. Oh gods oh shit this is _not_ how he wants to die—

“ _You’re_ that insolent _wretch_ who shredded me fifty years ago and had me shoved me into that _miserable_ well.”

What? Fifty years ago? The hell is she...

Blinking, he glances up. Mukade-jōrō’s bloodied face hovers over Dog Girl like a death toll over a warzone, haunting and inescapable. Dog Girl, to her part, responds by curling back her lip and flashing milky, dagger-point canines, with a raspy growl rumbling low in the back of her throat. But if the centipede is intimidated at all by this animalistic display, then she doesn’t deign to show it. The smile that cuts her face is scarlet with malice, all teeth and patronizing disdain and the promise of terrible things. But it isn’t aimed at him—in fact, it’s like she’s completely forgotten his existence, that her fangs are dyed with his blood.

So... it _wasn’t_ him she was after, then? Just that Shikon-thingy? If that’s the case...

“Oi. Uh, Mukade-jōrō, was it?”

Idly, Mukade-jōrō casts him a sidelong glance. A bored acknowledgement, but nothing more than that. As though conveying to him that he isn’t worth her time—and somehow, that’s reassuring.

“Listen,” he begins, trying to squirm as far away from Dog Girl’s leg as he can manage, because the less she associates him with an old enemy, the better, “I’m _real_ sorry about tearin’ off your arms and all. It was an accident. Won’t ever happen again. Promise.”

Her brow rise, but she says nothing.

Seeing that she’s not stopping him, he goes on, desperately swallowing down his nerves, “But, uh, now that I don’t have that Shikon-no-thingy in me anymore, you probably don’t need me around, right? So... how about you just let me go? And, hey, the next time you need to have a glowing ball of—I dunno, cancer or whatever that thing is—ripped out of _you_ , I’ll definitely return the favor!”

Silence beats out. The centipede continues to withhold response, chalky face stoic—and meanwhile, Dog Girl whirls around to stare at him openly, yellow eyes wide and burning with horrified incredulity.

Yasha’s confidence wavers, just a touch. “...sound good?”

At this, Mukade-jōrō turns to face him fully, but it’s Old Lady Cyclops that responds with a sharp and scolding, “Child, you had better not be trying to _negotiate_ with that monster!”

It’s hard to tell if everything is actually dark, nightfall and all, or his consciousness is just starting to flag. He flashes a glare in the direction he thinks the old crone’s voice is coming from. “Fuck off, Cyclops! I don’t wanna die!”

And then Mukade-jōrō’s face is pressing against the fringes of his comfort-zone, so close that her rancid breath fans wetly across his cheek. It’s sticky and hot and coppery with his own blood and he has to swallow back the urge to gag. His reflection is frozen in her enormous eyes—a black stick-figure pinned beneath the maroon promise of death, single free arm jagged as it tries vainly to keep him from being crushed. In that instant, his own image seems impossibly fragile, narrow and delicate and as easily snapped as a toothpick between someone’s teeth.

“Oh, that’s so cute.” She says this like someone admiring a puppy clumsily performing its first trick. It’s hard to tell with the crimson smear that paints the lower half of her face, nearly black in the darkness, but he thinks her lips might by curled into a patronizing smile. “I’m almost tempted.”

“W-Wait, really?” Holy shit, is this actually _working_?

Then her body _squeezes_. He gasps as his skeleton gives a wavering groan. Pain fireworks through his hip, leaves white spots blazing behind his corneas. A shout gets trapped in his throat, vibrates behind gritted teeth.

Cruel amusement dances in her glassy eyes. “Counter offer—I take the Jewel, and then I eat you both.”

Specks of blood and spittle dot his left cheek. He gulps. Why is this _happening_ to him and _what_ did he do to deserve it? “Counter-counter offer! You— _guh_!— _don’t_ do that thing, and we do my thing!”

“What kind of kannushi _are_ you?” Dog Girl demands, suddenly.

“Who in the _fuck_ said I was a kannushi?!” he snaps, offended in spite of himself.

None of this is apparently of any interest to Mukade-jōrō, because she darts away almost as suddenly as she came. In his periphery, Yasha catches her oozing towards the clearing like an oil spill, slick and dark and the portent of death in every forward centimeter that it claims. The villagers still clustered at the edges of the tree line are immediately set on-edge, raising their torches out in front of them until the amber glow paints their faces bright and gleams off the flinty ends of their weapons. If he’s being completely honest, Yasha had kind of forgotten they were still there.

So much for coming to his rescue. Bastards haven’t lifted a finger to help him, too scared shitless to even take a damn step forward. And here he is with a fucking hole in his side, bleeding out and pinned to a tree and about to be eaten by a deranged monster, because no one else is doing anything.

An arrow spears through the darkness, then. Mukade-jōrō halts to avoid being struck, and it flies narrowly passed her face.

Old Lady Cyclops seems to materialize from the gloom, then, gait quickened with urgency. She plants herself before the monster with all the intransigence of a brick wall obstructing an eighteen-wheeler that can’t get to the beaks in time and is uncaring of the casualties that the collision will wreak. Shoulders squared, legs spread out wide, bowstring still vibrating from the last shot even as she reaches into her quiver for another arrow. Something in the shadows on her face, pooling in the crevices of her wrinkles, gives her a severe and ferocious appearance decidedly different from the wry old woman who teased him about his colorful vocabulary.

“Out of the way, old woman,” hisses the centipede, rearing up with what little of her body isn’t being used to bind him in place.

There’s... no way the dusty old crone is actually saving his ass, right? No, that doesn’t make sense. Not after he accused her of trying to drug him— _twice_ now, once before back in the hut and again just a few minutes ago. After all that, and the way he’s been treating her up until now, why would she—

...then he notices the star-bright point gleaming out from the grass. It’s nearly hidden behind the cuff of her hakama, but he glimpses the winking of pale-pink. Probably still smeared with his blood, too.

_Oh, right. Stupid marble is uber-important, apparently. Keh._

“If you think,” begins Old Lady Cyclops with a spitting ferocity, drawing back another arrow and aiming at the monster’s face, “that I’m just going to stand idly by while you take the Shikon-no-Tama that my brother _died_ to protect, then you—”

Alarm flashes through Yasha, fierce and sharp, as she’s knocked to the ground before she can even finish speaking. Her bow is sent clattering off to the side, the arrow’s tip striking the dirt as it falls and ending up jutting out from a slant. Meanwhile, the crone withered hands fly to her middle and clutch at it in a way that suggests whatever blow the centipede struck—too fast for Yasha to make out, just a blur in the murk, his vision still spinning as his life continues to leak out his hip—it hit hard. Distance and oppressive darkness conceal any blood, and hell, he doesn’t even _like_ the old woman, but she’s a withered old sack of fragile bones and papery skin and he can’t help the worry that flutters in his belly.

“ _Crap_ ,” Dog Girl hisses.

Surprised—sympathy isn’t something you waste on someone you don’t know, after all—he glances up at her, only to find she isn’t looking in Old Lady Cyclops’s direction. Warily, he follows her gaze to where the pile of severed arms lays, chalky and motionless in the grass and no longer smoking at the ends. Mukade-jōrō settles above them, hovering.

Even with the difficult angle, he can make out the glow illuminating the white column of her throat, petal-pink and shining.

_Yeah. “Crap” just about sums it up._

It doesn’t stay there, though. Yasha doesn’t consider himself squeamish by any means, but he winces as it slides down the length of her esophagus, descending past her collarbone and slipping inside her ribs. The jewel lights the flesh up from the inside, traces out the forks of veins and makes bones hidden beneath her skin visible for all the world to see. A shudder of revulsion gores through him as it continues to move lower through her body in some sick demonstration of the monster’s digestive tract.

As disgusting as the sight is, it’s captivating in a horrific way, and so he almost misses it when the arms on the ground find themselves wrapped in a flickering, unearthly light. But he _doesn’t_ miss it when they suddenly jolt into the air, seeking the stumps from which they came. His jaw slackens as the skin becomes putty-like, the tears melting together and mending.

If only it stopped there. If it had stopped there, perhaps all he would feel is terror and the annoyance that whatever he did before has been rendered effectively useless.

But unfortunately, it doesn’t—no sooner have the arms fitted back into place than the monster’s white flesh goes gooey and soft. It rolls off her shoulders, forms folds as it oozes towards the ground, sagging in a way that reminds him a long rope of taffy that’s been stretched too thin and unable to fight the pull of gravity anymore. For one brief and dizzying moment, somewhere between disbelief and hope, he wonders if that means this Shikon-whatever is too powerful for her. That the very thing she was so desperate to kill him for will burn the damn monster from the inside out. And oh, how wonderfully karmic would that be.

Then the chalk-white flesh falls away, landing in the grass with a sickeningly wet _splat_. And underneath it is a creature not only whole, but far more horrifying than it was before.

Gone is the pretense of humanity. Scaly purple-black flesh replaces smooth alabaster. Wide jaw brimming with endless dagger-like fangs that would make a shark envious. Slick, ropy tongue wagging in the air as though searching for its next victim. Bulging, lidless eyes barely contained by their sockets, burning red against the darkness.

_Okay. Forget “crap”. More like “fucking **shit** ”._

His heart thunders in his ears, pounds in his throat, roars through his senses. Everything reaches him from down a long tunnel—the crushing pressure around his middle, the searing agony of the hole in his body, the blood cooling on his skin. Men are shouting as they ready their weapons. Old Lady Cyclops grunts as she rises to her feet, reaching out to reclaim her bow. The monster gives a gurgling hiss from deep in its throat. And the devastating squeeze on his middle tightens with the portent of him becoming a pulpy, bloody mess very soon.

Something primal sweeps over him, then. Frigid and wild and all-consuming. He finds himself suddenly aware of the end’s specter breathing down his neck.

_...what the hell. I don’t want to fucking **die** like this._

No. That’s not right. It’s not that he doesn’t want to die like _this_ —he doesn’t want die, period.

“ _Dammit_ , Sesshomaru.” Dog Girl’s frustrated growl shocks him back into himself. He looks up at her to find her fangs flashing, eyes luminous amber. “Of _all_ the times to be away from your village...”

Out of almost nowhere, the exchange between her and the centipede from before flashes through his mind, cutting and sharp. The chill lifts from him almost as quickly as it came, displaced by a white-hot rush. Hope, a tentative and stuttering thing, finds new life behind his ribs.

“Oi.” She glances in his direction, brow quirked. Perhaps she’s as surprised as he is by how level and firm his voice comes out, despite the terror churning in his gut. “Earlier, you said she was lucky you were pinned here. That mean you can beat her?”

Incredulous annoyance congeals on her face. “Eh? So _now_ you’re going to try negotiating with _me_?”

Yasha bristles. “Keh! _You_ aren’t gonna eat me or crush me in half!”

Her mouth twists skeptically, and fury pounds through his pulse. Like she has the right to judge, anyway! She obviously isn’t human, has some kind of miraculous ability to survive being fucking impaled through the heart. He, on the other hand, is so painfully mortal, and there’s blood still pumping sluggishly out from the tear in his flesh. Not to mention that from where she’s pinned, she isn’t victim to the coils that snare around the tree trunk, ready to flatten him from the ribs down.

As though prompted by that thought, the coil tightens _again_. He chokes on a shout. “ _Fuck_ , can you kick her ass or _not_?”

That earns a seemingly disappointed sigh. “You _really_ have no pride as man, huh?”

Oh for the love of— “ _Yes or no_ , woman!”

“Don’t you get it?” Annoyance hardens her tone—and something else. Something almost... pained. “It doesn’t matter either way! I’m _stuck_ here, in case you haven’t noticed!”

There’s darkness in his vision as he looks up. The arrow wavers, a sharp and unforgiving angle. “Okay, so if I— _ack_!—if I pull that arrow out—”

She interrupts him with a high, hysteric little laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

If this were any other situation, there would be a sarcastic retort stinging on his tongue. But his vision wobbles dangerously, and with a grim clarity, he realizes that between the pressure and the pain and the blood loss, it won’t be long before he passes out. He shoves his ego aside in favor of _reaching_ —and oh _damn_ , it’s farther away than he thought...

“ _This_ seal was placed on me by the most powerful kannushi of this generation, okay? It’s probably meant to endure for _literal centuries_. Hell, I—I don’t even know how it is I’m awake at _all_ right now—but even _still_.”

One of those giant insect legs arches over his head as he strains. The vice-grip on his abdomen hardly allows him to move, his joints groaning as he _stretches_. Maybe it’s his imagination, but he swears he can hear his shoulder socket groan, threatening to dislocate.

“Something like _this_? With _this_ much power behind it? Only the person who cast the spell in the first place, or someone who matches them in power, could possibly break it.”

Gods, if she would just _stop talking_. It’s actually starting piss him off, now. Here he is, trying to free her, and she’s fucking _lecturing_ him on his own powerlessness. With every word out of her mouth, practically _dripping_ with patronizing condescension, he finds himself more and more tempted to just leave her pinned here. Not his problem if she gets eaten, right?

But shit. She might be his only chance at making out of this alive, and—

“So there’s _no way_ that someone like _you_ could ever—”

—and god _dammit_. Yasha _doesn’t want to die_.

When his fingertips _finally_ brush the fletching, it’s like a miracle made tactile. Somehow, he can feel it humming against his skin, vibrating with an impossible resonance. Something in his veins sings in answer, a headrush behind his eyes. He pinches a feather between his fingers and—

And then the arrow is gone.

At this point, the darkness behind his eyelids threatens to drown, and he can’t tell how much is imagination and how much is reality. But he could swear the arrow simply crumbled out of existence, flared dusty-pink before it evaporated beneath his touch. Like all it wanted in the world was to simply vanish, and the only thing stopping it was some long-neglected permission.

“Keh!” he scoffs, dropping his arm. “Powerful seal my _ass_!”

Dog Girl’s jaw hangs open. “How—H-How did you—”

“ _You’ll not interfere again, hanyou!_ ” comes a garbled hiss.

Abruptly, the vice-grip on Yasha’s middle vanishes. A gasp leaves him at the unexpected freedom, but it ends up being terribly short-lived.

Coils of carapace immediately slam into the world. He’s smothered beneath the weight, the pressure, the hard scales that make his bones groan, the hundreds of twitching insect legs, _oh fuck I’m **actually** gonna die this time_—

—something _pulses_ to life above him, a heartbeat remembering its purpose—

“ _Sankon Tessou_!”

The next thing he knows, the roots have made for a painful landing, and massive chunks of insect are raining down from the heavens like some sick parody of a hailstorm. Wooden splinters litter the ground, the roots that once constricted the trunk having inexplicably burst into pieces. And there’s a blur, red and silver, on the fringes of his awareness—

She flashes him a grateful smile.

* * *

“Yasha!” Another light smack on his cheek. “Boy, wake up!”

The bleary image of Old Lady Cyclops, hovering too-close over his face, comes into lazy focus. Worry draws her wrinkled mouth into a tight line, visible brow furrowing so tight that her brow looks like it’s about to split open. Her single eye burns into him, dark and fierce and jabbing relentlessly at his awareness. Vaguely, he’s aware of the fact that his head is being supported, the back of his neck cradled in what feels like a calloused palm. Yasha blinks at her dully, not quite understanding where this sudden concern for his wellbeing is coming from.

Pain rises into his awareness, then, like a corpse to the surface of a dark lake. Searing in his side, throbbing through his abdomen, aching in his legs. A groan breaks in his throat, his teeth clacking as he clenches his jaw. _Fuck_. This must be what it feels like to get hit by a bus.

“Thank goodness,” the crone sighs.

He wrinkles his nose as she pulls back. “Anybody ever tell you your breath stinks?”

To which her single eye goes half-mast in exasperation. “I’ll take that to mean I don’t have to check your head for injuries, then.”

As she helps him upright, her hands deceptively firm on his shoulder and lower back, his surroundings come into bleary clarity. Deep navy darkness thrums to night’s resonance, letting him know that the last of daylight has slipped away while he wasn’t attention. Overhead, the Goshinboku’s branches cast a heavy shadow, and its roots find themselves acting as his reluctant cradle. There’s a stillness that rattles through the air, like the entire world is holding its breath. Like it was waiting for him to raise his head before it dared to move again.

Immediately, he’s assaulted by a foul and tangy stench that makes him regret regaining consciousness. He gags on it, the sheer thickness threatening to smother him. Belatedly, one hand is clasped protectively over his mouth and nose, but by then it’s already slid into his throat and gotten trapped there, festering.

Finding the source doesn’t take long. Just meters away, a great hulking shape weeps a sickly silver-green goo that seems to wilt any grass that has the displeasure of coming into contact with it. Similar lumps smatter the clearing in messy chunks, sizes ranging between absolutely massive to wet, cleanly-cut slabs that remind him disturbingly of sliced bread. Some insect legs have been completely severed, laying broken on the ground, while others continue to cling stubbornly to their host body. When one of the still-attached legs twitches, Yasha’s head goes helium-light.

 _Must’ve passed out and missed the fight... Damn, that’s embarrassing._ “ _Please_ tell me that thing is dead.”

“For now, yes.” And what the hell does _that_ mean? “Are you alright?”

As if on cue, his side releases another burning wave. Gritting his teeth, he presses a hand to where the hole and tries not to wince when blood trickles sticky-warm between his fingers. “I almost got fucking crushed, and I have a fucking _hole_ in my side. What do _you_ think?”

“I think that, considering you haven’t lost your tongue, you’re in better shape than I initially thought,” returns Old Lady Cyclops dryly.

“Oh fuck you.”

“That’s an awfully nice way to treat someone who just saved your life,” comes a deadpan somewhere in the distance.

A protest is already on Yasha’s tongue as he aims a glare in the voice’s direction, but it dies when he discovers a ring of torchlight gleams across the flinty heads of readied spears. The villagers, having gathered their bravery, have emerged from their place cowering at the tree line and pay him as little mind as he’s been paying them up until now. Instead, their distrustful and even loathing glares are aimed at a scarlet silhouette they circle around loosely, and those glares are returned with an expression of passive indignation.

Dog Girl, shoulders squared as though trying to assert her right to exist in the world. She stands free and tall and proud in all her five-foot-nothing glory, with her waifish build and her furry ears, and Yasha could have _sworn_ she was more intimidating when she was bound up in tree roots.

Her clothes more resemble a miko’s ritual attire than something to be worn by a half-animal girl someone deemed threatening enough to shoot an arrow at. What he assumes is a chihaya of some kind wraps tight around her torso and tumbles unrestrained to her knees, solid crimson instead of the normal sheer and gauzy white. A silky maroon obi holds it firmly in place, tied in a sloppy bow at the front. Her legs are concealed beneath an ankle-length skirt, which he belatedly recognizes as an andon-hakama. Enormous sleeves nearly eclipse the fists planted firm on her hips, a coarse black thread woven simply but decoratively around the wide rims. If she’s wearing shoes, he can’t see them, and since the villagers are all barefoot, it wouldn’t surprise him if she was, too.

What _does_ surprise him, though, is that he doesn’t see a tail. It seems like such a bizarre thing to expect, in hindsight, but—she’s a dog, right? Dogs have tails. Is it just under the skirt or...? Wait, why is he even worrying about this?

_Maybe I **do** have a head injury. Be just my fucking luck, too._

Just then, Yasha catches movement in his periphery. The nearest fleshy lump, sitting a few meters away and stationary until now, quivers in place. The few unbroken legs that remain give erratic twitches. His eyes widen, but the shock doesn’t come fast enough before another chunk nearby suddenly stutters to life as well.

Old Lady Cyclops must catch the color leaving his face, because she follows his gaze, and the wrinkles in her skin sag grimly. “We must hurry and find the Jewel before the mononoke’s body regenerates,” she announces, which makes the villagers tense up.

Sorry, what? _Regenerates_?! “Are you fucking _shitting_ me?”

Severed insect legs suddenly snap into motion. Another hunk of centipede jerks to life. Then another. One flips over with a great groan. The villagers finally tear their gazes away from the oh-so-threatening slip of a dog-woman, the torchlight illuminating the slow bloom of horror on their faces.

Yasha waits for Old Lady Cyclops to shout “sike!”.

Instead, she rises creakingly to her feet and hobbles her way over to the nearest chunk. Like a house of cards collapsing beneath a stiff breeze, the villagers abandon their loose circle in favor of following her lead. People scatter about the clearing with a speed that leaves him dizzy in their haste to claim pulsing lumps of shredded carapace for themselves. While the dangerous ends of weapons are aimed at oozing flesh, heads whip around frantically. The shadows whisper around their desperation like a heavy velvet curtain.

Only one man refuses to budge, the rusty tines of his pitchfork pointed at Dog Girl’s throat. If she notices, then she ignores it, luminous yellow gaze sliding past him to observe the scurrying. Her disinterested expression strikes Yasha as oddly forced.

Yet another hunk of flesh quivers in the murk. Fresh hysteria churns in his belly. They’re all far too preoccupied to give a damn about him, at this point. Assuming Mukade-jōrō does revive, Dog Girl can probably handle it again. She was the one who killed her the first time, right? Right. She could totally handle the damn monster a second time, if need be. Meanwhile, there’s no magical marble lodged in his kidney anymore and this is _so_ not his problem. Now would be a fantastic time to just duck the hell out of here. Just walk away, find the well, go home. Simple.

It’s as he’s rising shakily to his feet, leaning against the Goshinboku’s trunk for support, that he catches the telltale pink gleam.

Well, not quite _pink_ anymore. More of a pale, muted lavender with just enough pink mixed in to still be recognizable. Regardless of the color, its gauzy light reaches him from beneath a thick carapace-covered slab. It’s the chunk that Old Lady Cyclops has taken charge of, frowning into the weeping flesh—at the exact opposite end.

He blinks dumbly, then points. “...isn’t that it right there?”

The old woman’s head snaps up. “Where?”

Um. Where he’s pointing? “ _There_.”

With an owlish blink, she shuffles over to the other end. “Here?”

Is she stupid or something? “It’s fucking _glowing_.”

Her knees groan as they meet the ground, her bow set down in the grass. “How deep?”

Incredulity overcomes common sense, and he finds himself stumbling over to her on watery knees before he can think better of it. “Can’t you _see_ it?”

“If I could, would I be asking you?” she returns matter-of-factly. “Now, how deep?”

“It’s—” He stops, realizing that if he has to verbally direct her to the damn thing’s exact location, it’s going to take forever and the centipede will revive and fucking eat them all. “Aw _hell_. Gimme the damn thing.”

Thankfully, she makes no comment, merely shuffling aside to allow him access. Bug goo pools in the grass, a bright and sickly mint-color not unlike melted toothpaste. The stench rising from it swamps him as he approaches, a thick and rancid wave that makes him regret every being born with a nose. He keeps his breath suspended defiantly in his throat as he gets down on his knees.

That muted lavender glow taunts him from behind a wall of translucent silvery-green muscle and shimmery veins that he was much better off _not_ seeing, thanks. He’s never considered himself particularly squeamish, but as he rolls up his uniform sleeve, his stomach lurches.

Oh, gods, he’s not _actually_ going to do this, is he?

Another spasm goes through the clump, and more goo squirts out. “Hurry, if you’re going to do it,” Old Lady Cyclops urges.

 _God **dammit**. Okay, fuck._ _Just—don’t think about it._

He plunges his hand in.

And _immediately_ regrets it. It’s wet and slick and gelatinous in a way that makes Yasha want to swear off mochi for the rest of his life. Slimy warmth sucks hard at his fingers, at his wrist, at the length of his forearm as it sinks almost halfway in. Damn marble didn’t look like it was in that deep from outside, but _shit_ , maybe he should have let the old miko do this instead. The flesh pulses with the indecisive sluggishness of something that isn’t quite alive and isn’t quite dead and it seems to contract revoltingly around his arm and _ohfuck_ , this is _disgusting_.

After an eternity of groping around, he _finally_ senses an ethereal tickle against his skin. A gasp of relief breaks in his throat when his fingertips brush something smooth and solid and glassy. There’s something almost welcoming about the hum of it against his skin as he rolls it into his palm, clutches it tight with a desperation—and then he yanks it the fuck _out_.

A sickening _squelch_ punctuates his arm’s freedom. Long ropes of slime twine themselves around his fingers and follow as he pulls away. The stupid jewel is cradled in the dip of his palm, winking pinkly through his fingers as goo drips thick and sticky off his knuckles. He grimaces.

_Greaaaaaat. **Just** how I always wanted to celebrate turning fifteen. Happy fucking birthday to me._

Hissing steam rises from the flesh in sticky waves. Yasha jumps back in alarm—

As the hunk abruptly desiccates. Carapace cracking, muscle withering, goo evaporating... it all just falls apart. He watches dumbly as it greys away into great lumps of dust, which themselves whisper out of existence so fast it leaves him to wonder if it was ever there at all. In a blink, only crumbling bones remain.

“How—” he starts, then stops. Looks down at the marble cradled in the dip of his palm. ...maybe he’d rather not know.

“Stay back, hanyou!” someone shouts from the other side of the clearing, followed by the creak of a bending bow.

Yasha turns, blinking through the shadows. Aged bones now occupy the places where the shredded lumps of carapace once sat quivering around the clearing—and with the abstract threat of Mukade-jōrō’s resurrection no longer pressing down like the flat of a blade to your pulse, the villagers have again taken the liberty of converging around Dog Girl.

Why they continue to treat her like a danger is lost on him, though. It’s not like she’s been spitting threats or made any move to eat anybody. All she’s done since her release thus far has patiently indulged their paranoia by allowing them to point their weapons at her, aiming spears and arrows and pitchforks and hoes at her with the intent to cut her open. At the present, she has, either oblivious to the deadliness of the pointy instruments or simply unbothered by them, dared to take a few casual steps in his direction. Her approach is impeded only by a spearhead that hovers a little too close to her jugular.

Dog Girl raises her hands placatingly, but the sight of her claws only seems to make the men more uncomfortable. “I’m just seeing if he’s alright. _Sheesh_.”

Jaws tighten, but the villagers bide their silence. Meanwhile, Old Lady Cyclops rises creakily to her feet, scooping her bow back up on the way and then shuffling forward with something in her shoulders that reminds Yasha of a soldier going to war. To his further surprise, the old miko plants herself in front of him like a human shield.

“You’ll stay right where you are, Kagome.” The dark sternness in her voice surprises him. Her too? “Come not a step further.”

“Kagome”, apparently, frowns for a moment in visible indignation. But the expression lasts only a fragment of a moment before it smooths into something more neutral. Earnest. “Miko-sama,” she says, carefully, “in case you’ve forgotten, he’s still bleeding.” Amber eyes flash pointedly in his direction, liquid with seemingly genuine concern. “You should get him some medical attention.”

As if prompted by the reminder, another spark of pain travels up Yasha’s nerves. He clenches his jaw, tentatively exploring the wound with his cleaner hand. It doesn’t hurt as badly as before, the bleeding seeming to have stopped all on its own, but there’s still the uncomfortable sensation of his shirt crusting to his skin. Not to mention that there are probably thick bruises forming on his belly where Mukade-jōrō’s coils threatened to crush him to a messy pulp.

Silence beats for a long moment. Old Lady Cyclops stands firm, knuckles white around her bow. Dog Girl arches her brows patiently.

Finally, the old miko slips her bow over her shoulder, turning away to address Yasha, who is still crouching on the ground and waiting for his legs to feel a little less doughy. There’s a disconcerting flintiness in her eyes as she leans down to hook him by the bicep. “Come, child. Let’s return to the village.”

Immediately, he snatches his arm back. Okay, he may have a hole in him, but he still has some _pride_ , dammit. “Fuck off, I can walk on my own.”

“Still so stubborn, aren’t you?” he catches Old Lady Cyclops muttering.

In normal circumstances, Yasha is sure he would be more puzzled by that, and maybe even offended that she would presume to know _anything_ about him at all when they literally just met this morning. And under less than favorable circumstances at that.

But with adrenaline slowly leaking out of him and the pain throbbing through his body and the slime dripping off his arm, the senile mutterings of an ancient miko are something he could honestly care less about. So in the name of just getting this day fucking _over_ with already, he pretends not to have heard. Maybe it’s something he can revisit later, after a nice hot shower and a decade-long nap.

Man, does that sound nice. Hopefully nothing _else_ happens.

* * *

It still aches where the arrow struck.

 _He_ lives behind her eyelids, his silhouette a harsh juxtaposition of stark black and crisp white. Those eyes that had always been cold and clear and cutting as the icicles that dripped off eaves in the winter—but for her, had thawed just enough to make her dizzily hopeful. The broad curve of his shoulders, the movement of his powerful arms, the whisper of his jōe with every purposeful movement. Bowstring still vibrating its guilt as she looked on in horror, in disappointment, in disgust. His gaze frigid as it met hers, imperious and unforgiving and utterly remorseless.

Kagome’s claws sink deep into the bark of her perch.

Time has passed since then. That’s obvious enough to see. When he revealed his treachery, spring was in the process of timidly displacing winter. Now, it’s summer that tiptoes through the night with the shyness of something new and tentative and not-yet sure of itself. Rice planting season is still well at its height, if the recently-tilled-earth scent wafting in dark and heavy from the fields is any indication.

There’s something else, though. Something in the air, a freshness she can’t quite identify, some cloying note that gets stuck in the back of her throat. A warning that more than just a few months have come and gone.

Huh.

Peering beyond the tree line, the torchlight guiding the retreating villagers almost reminds her of festival lanterns, and she would have found a tentative beauty in the gleaming lights if they were not held by men who pointed weapons at her just minutes ago. When they abandoned the forest, they moved as though they expected her to stalk at their heels with her fangs bared, eager to taste their blood on her tongue, and the knowledge of their own powerlessness against her inhuman strength spurred them to flee from the canopy’s protection. It would be annoying if not for the fact that she’s grown used—people seeing her claws first, hearing her voice second—and she only heaved a resigned sigh at their retreating backs.

 _They could just be worried about the injured_ , she reasons to herself, trying in vain to keep some spark of hope alive, _and want to get them medical treatment as fast as they can. That could be it._

Not that those two things are mutually exclusive... Whatever the case, it doesn’t change the fact that they still departed with all the swiftness of fleeing a dangerous creature. Whether that creature is the specter of death or the image of her they conjured up in their minds makes little difference. Running away is still running away, in the end.

Further in the distance, the village that is presumably their destination rises up against the horizon in broken pieces. The partial ruins of a place that survived, but did not come out unscathed, and will have to nurse its wounds before it can stand fully upright again. Though her eyesight is not nocturnal in nature, it’s far superior to a human’s and she can discern shapes in the darkness and make out all the places where Mukade-jōrō presumably laid waste to these people’s livelihoods. Fractured huts and torn-up fields and innocents who have lost the means to support themselves.

Righteous anger simmers low in her belly. How did that even _happen_? No way a youkai should have made it passed the protective barrier, much less into the village itself, without being slain on the spot. Pompous and cruel, yes—but _he_ was never so irresponsible.

_Why can’t I catch his scent?_

No matter how deep she breathes, swallowing the night air down until her sinus cavity fills with its hypnotic darkness, _he_ alludes her. It’s not even that the scent is stale from a brief absence, or that it lingers old in places she knows to be his favorite haunts, or even that it doesn’t drift out from the village—it’s just _not there_. Not even a whisper of it remains to tickle at her senses.

All she finds, instead, is that almost-but-not-quite scent from before. The one that rolled off the boy that she, in her groggy wakefulness, had mistaken for _him_.

She frowns as she recalls the lookalike. The scent radiating from his skin wasn’t the only thing uncannily similar. Long raven hair flowing like a shining midnight river. Cheekbones that once deigned to allow her fingertips on them. Brows that drew together in to form subtle shifts in expression. The powerful curve of his jaw, the stubborn slope of his nose, the lovely shape of his lips. Those same clear, dark eyes...

And the Shikon-no-Tama inside his body.

Yeah, _something_ isn’t adding up here. And damn if Kagome isn’t going to figure it out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ey! A second chapter!
> 
> AU!Kagome’s robes look a lot like [this](https://www.mimusubi.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/DeanSpencer-Miko.png), but pure red and with a loose obi around her waist instead of the string tying the robe together.
> 
> A couple people actually went out and asked about Sesshomaru's role in this fic and I want to give those people kudos for correctly guessing where this was headed, proving that I am not as sneaky as I originally thought. We'll get into the meat of that a little more in the next chapter.
> 
> Translations:  
> Andon-hakama = one of the two varieties of hakama, this referring to undivided hakama that resemble long and pleated skirts; though miko in the series wear the other type, it was traditional for them to wear this variety  
> Chihaya = a long, sheer robe worn by miko during special ceremonies  
> Jōe = a white ceremonial robe worn by kannushi  
> Mochi = a Japanese treat made from sweet, glutinous rice that has an elastic and slightly gelatinous texture  
> Mononoke = older term for youkai, referring specifically to wicked and malevolent spirits  
> Mukade-jōrō = mukade means “centipede” and jōrō is a term referring to court lady, often translated as “mistress”; Mistress Centipede’s original Japanese title  
> Obi = old-fashioned tie-on belt; a catch-all term referring to most belts, from the formal ones worn over kimonos to simple karate belts
> 
> Comments, questions, and con-crit is welcome!
> 
> That's all for now,  
> Tsuki


	3. Return of a Once-Great Soul

Kagome is relieved, at least, to see that the damage could have been much worse.

Entire huts have been reduced to splintered detritus. The ground is torn by great furrows that look like fat, bulging veins in the earth. Livestock cower in what few buildings had the privilege of avoiding destruction. There are families who will likely need to sleep outside tonight, curled up in cold rather than behind the safety of wooden walls.

But—there are no bodies that need to be fished from the rubble, and no blood mists the night. And that is something to celebrate.

Unbidden, she thinks back to when she raged through this village herself who-knows-how-long-ago. When she rivaled the flames that seared red-amber against a daylit sky and belched dark, heavy columns of smoke. It started in the shrine first, lit during the struggle as the villagers tried to reclaim the Jewel, and then it spread through with all the mercy of a contagion.

Or, so she thinks. Strangely, her memory skips over details that _should_ have stood out more starkly, but at the time only struck her as inconsequential at worst and inconvenient at best. Barely worth acknowledging, as she leaped along rooftops and the verdant canopy bobbed tantalizingly in sight. Frightened screams that jabbed unforgivingly at her eardrums, the terror bright in people’s eyes. Arrows and spears that soared passed, mere annoyances to be batted away lazily if they came too close. Victory was so close that she almost dared to let it bathe her tongue, stain her mouth tangy-sour with a cloyingly sweet chaser. Sympathy was smothered beneath it, and the innocents caught in the crossfire were forgotten—how could she spare them any thought, when the Shikon-no-Tama’s mesmerizing shine bathed her claws?

Oh... Wow, okay. Thinking back, that was, admittedly, not one of her _finer_ moments. But in her defense—

...in her defense—

_...yeah, there’s really nothing I can say here._

A groan breaks in her throat, her face falling into her palms. Shame rises in her sternum, leaves behind a sticky film on the inside of her ribcage. No wonder those villagers feared her in the woods, when she rampaged as a mindless beast would. True, her intentions may have been to avoid a confrontation, stowing into the shrine in secret and hoping to go unnoticed—but that certainly does not change the devastation that was wrought.

It seemed so logical, at the time—but perhaps “logical” does not apply to thoughts narrowed into anger, bitterness, _spite_. She broke through the ceiling of that holy space, she toppled the torii gate on her way out, she only took the Jewel to prove that she _could_. All because she was trying to _prove_...

Heh. Reasons don’t matter. _He_ cut her down—and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

She _still_ can’t catch his scent.

* * *

At the base of the hill where the shrine greets the horizon, an undamaged hut sits nestled as close to the kami’s touch as is allowed without edging towards sacrilege. When morning rises, the shine’s long and hazy shadow will reach out to brush its fingertips over the thatched roof like a blessing—but as night presses down, the blessing will become a curse, and a cutting loneliness weaves into the wooden frame.

It’s the first time Kagome has dared to approach. The hut is by no means holier than the hilltop shrine, and yet...

Maybe she asked, once, if it was cramped inside, the space shared between him and his younger sister. If he answered her, she doesn’t remember. Doesn’t want to, really. Remembering bruises those shining moments with bitter hindsight, and she would rather maintain as much light as she can.

Holy or sacred or shining, the hut seems very plain as she stands in front of it now.

Honeyed light leaks from the narrow windows, from the crack in the woven curtain hung over the curtain. A hearth fire crackles warmth beyond her sight, joined by the erratic bubbling of water boiling in a worn cooking pot. The air tastes pleasantly of smoke from fresh wood becoming black charcoal—and a thin tang of coppery blood-scent, chased by medicinal herbs so intensely bitter-sour she has to wrinkle her nose.

Human blood. Human scent. Two of them, though neither is the one she seeks. One, she recognizes as the one-eyed miko who accosted her in the forest. But the other...

“Son of a fucking _bitch_!”

Her ears flatten against her head. It’s her own fault. Kagome should have listened to her nose, should have known better. This voice is like scratchy hemp compared to the deep, dark-silk tenor she was expecting. She deserves to be assaulted with the reminder that she’s dealing with someone _else_.

“I only just touched it,” comes a weary, chiding voice that sounds like creaking wood.

A pained hiss, framed by the first voice’s harsh cadence. “It fucking _stings_!”

“Profanities will not change that, boy.”

“ _Fuck_ you. I have a goddamn _hole_ in me!”

“‘Tis a shallow wound, compared to what _could_ have been wrought.” A pointed pause punctuates that statement, and Kagome imagines him pinned beneath the old miko’s single, scolding eye. “And is likely to be infinitely more painful, should an infection set in.”

“...keh.”

More herbal pungency follows, dizzyingly thick. Soft sounds of pained protest pepper the air. Surreptitiously as she can, Kagome lowers herself to an anticipatory crouch. She hooks the edge of the curtain with her clawed forefinger, and then, timidly, peels it back. Just a sliver. Just enough to see.

Firelight washes the wooden walls in deep golden-red, sending the shadows fleeing for their lives. Faintly, she can make out a limp rag hanging out from the lip of a cast-iron pot, but it’s the stranger who fills her vision, sitting right at the forefront of where she dares to peer inside. He’s framed in amber by the hearth’s glow, body turned her way but his head addressing the opposite direction, presumably where the miko tending to his injury lingers beyond Kagome’s line of sight. Those strange garments he was wearing before—the clinging dark robe over a white undershirt that just barely peeked out from his stiff, high collar—have discarded to the side in a rumpled pile. Only his odd hakama remain, hugging grey-black to the haphazard crisscross of his legs.

What this means is that his bare chest and shoulders and arms are all _very_ exposed.

She swallows down a squeak before it can give her away, heat rising in her cheeks. She should look away. She should look away _right now_. She should—

He’s... not _bad_ to look at, if she’s being _completely_ honest with herself. Definitely could benefit from sitting up straighter instead of hunching over like that, though. It would serve to make him look more dignified, less petulant. But that aside...

A buttery tan complexion, like wood smoothed down by a carver’s expert hands and molded into a lovely shape. With the way his shoulders aren’t finished filling out and his arms retain a youthful slenderness, she wonders if he’s closer to her age. Hair the color of a glossy corvid’s wing is bound up in a high tail, but the heavy spill of it has been thrown over the shoulder nearest to her, cascading silkily down to tickle at the bend of his elbow. Disappointingly, the hair conceals the lines of his throat from view—aside from the brief flash she catches beneath his jaw—and partially blots out the defined curvature of his collarbone.

But what she can make out, hanging just beneath the dip of his clavicle, is a glow like a starlit promise waiting to be kept.

_He still has the Shikon-no-Tama on him._

Pale, wedge-shaped beads strung along a braided twine string, and she remembers how smooth they felt against her fingertips, the weightlessness of it in her hands. Now, it circles his neck like a collar, like a binding claim of ownership. The Jewel rests placidly in the line between his pecks, casting a dim and sugary pink light across bronzed skin. Kagome’s heart quickens in her throat. All she needs to do is—

Movement at the edge of her view. Herbal stench. A hiss from the stranger. Her gaze drifts lower.

Belly painted angry red, a prelude to what will no doubt be dark, pulpy bruises after a few days’ time. Blood-scent, faint and coppery and nearly smothered beneath the intensity of the herbs. The very reason for why those herbs need to be administered in the first place.

Guilt stabs deep. Back then, his injury hadn’t registered at all. Her head was pounding too loud with fury and frustration and _damn you bastard, where **are** you_—

As he is now, he’s hardly a threat. And if his behavior earlier was any indication, likely to surrender the Jewel in a heartbeat if it came between him and his own life. She could burst in there, fangs bared and claws ready, and once again seize the Shikon Jewel for herself. It would be _easy_.

But...

_“I want you to promise me,” Mother says, clammy fingers lacing with Kagome’s own, “that you won’t ever forget who you are, no matter what they tell you. You are my sweet daughter, and do not let any number of ignorant fools convince you otherwise.”_

That... is _not_ what she wants to be.

Sudden movement from the stranger makes her tense. He turns, his face flashing into her visibility—she braced herself, but even still, her breath hitches at the assault of a phantom’s watermark.

An impatient huff leaves him as he props his elbow up on his knee. His jaw comes to perch on his knuckles while he side-eyes the miko bandaging his wound. Brows furrowed, mouth bent into a petulant frown, eyes half-narrowed—so _expressive_. “Don’t suppose there’s any chance blood transfusions have been invented yet.”

Fingers hesitate, very briefly. “I... know not of what you speak, but I have some herbs that can assist your body in recovering the blood it lost.”

“So... _more_ smelly plants. Greaaaat.”

_Come to think of it, he does look a little pale... And he passed out while I fought Mukade-jōrō, didn’t he?_

“Would you like to come in, Kagome?”

Heart lurching, Kagome jerks back. The curtain rasps as it falls closed over her little peeking-sliver. Has... Has the miko known she was out here the _whole time_?!

Heat burns in her face as she tries to calm the frantic flutter of her pulse in her throat. Okay, so she maybe was watching a little longer than she’d _intended_ to, but she wasn’t _spying_. Wasn’t gawking, or eavesdropping, or doing anything that should have her cheeks searing an incriminatory red. Calm down.

...although, she _had_ been staring a little, hadn’t she? At him, mostly—him, the familiar stranger, and his... shirtlessness.

But not _intentionally_! How _else_ was she supposed to react, with a half-naked gorgeous boy her age sitting there right in front of her?

_I... am going to pretend I never thought that._

“Wait, is she _here_?” demands the definitely- _not_ -gorgeous boy from somewhere behind the curtain.

Okay. Her two options now are to either run like a coward and undergo the embarrassment of pretending she wasn’t here—or, to go in there, head held high, and maintain some scrap of her dignity while getting what she came here for. And she’s not going to be totally humiliated tonight, thank you very much.

Trying her best to ignore the unshakable feeling like she’s about to do something taboo, she rises back up to her feet and gives her hakama a swift but forceful dusting. Nerves hum beneath her skin as she squares her shoulders, steels herself for the upcoming confrontation. Confidence, Kagome. Let it harden in your bones and stiffen in your spine and hold you upright.

And above all, _don’t_ let yourself get taken in by that uncanny resemblance.

She snaps the curtain aside.

The hut is... more mundane, somehow, than what she was expecting-but-not. Cramped and threadbare, no valuables as far as she can see. Boiling water cradled in a simple stew pot that sits above a proudly burning fire, a rag hanging over the lip touched by redness. Rolls of bandages lay near to the cuffs of the miko’s red hakama, none touched but still present just in case. A stirring bowl from which rises the chaotic medley of sweet-bitter-sour-musty from a crushed herbal poultice. Off to the side, nearby where the plain cookware has been stored, a yumi sits propped against the wall, resting placidly alongside its companion quiver—weapons that Kagome would almost consider discarded if not for the fact that the bow is still strung taut, as though preparing for another fight to come.

Close to the hearth, the lookalike straightens at her sudden appearance, that unfairly-familiar face loosening with open surprise. Off to his side, the old miko pokes absently at the crackling charcoal with a worn fire-iron, all the while keeping her single eye trained on Kagome.

Lookalike Boy blinks owlishly at her. “How long have you been out there?”

Embarrassment attempts to rise within her, nestle between her ribs and make itself unpleasantly at home. Kagome’s ear twitches, refusing to let it. She says nothing.

“Come for the Jewel, have you?” asks the old miko as she sets the fire-iron aside. You would almost be surprised at how oddly noncommittal she is now, given how she acted in the forest, if her gaze did not cut like an obsidian dagger.

“ _No_ ,” Kagome retorts tartly. Really! She has half a mind to be offended!

To which the old miko only placidly arches a brow. Something about it makes Kagome quaver, any confidence that might have bolstered her quick to soften. It reminds her oddly of the disapproving looks Mother used to give her, those few times she disobeyed and was subsequently caught for it, because she had little tact for deception.

“...well, okay, yes. _But_.” She takes a few bold steps forward, allowing the curtain to whisper closed behind her, and shoots a pointed look at Lookalike Boy. “I have some questions for you.”

His brows pinch. “Me?”

Anticipation builds behind her ribs, but she locks her forearms over her chest in a firm cross that, hopefully, will make her look more intimidating than she feels. “Who are you, and why do you look so much like Sesshomaru?”

“...the fuck is a ‘sesshomaru’?”

The open confusion on his face gives her pause. It _looks_ genuine enough, but... No. He couldn’t possibly be that ignorant, right? “You... don’t know who Sesshomaru is?”

That earns her a flat look. “The fuck was your first clue?”

 _Oh. So **that’s** how you want to be, huh?_ She sniffs. “I guess I didn’t realize I was talking to someone who’s been living under a rock.”

“Fuck off! I’m not _from_ here, dammit.”

“Eh? You’re not from Musashi?” Guess that explains his weird accent...

He pauses, grimacing as a silent debate seems to go on behind his eyes. Seeing so much emotion slip freely across _that_ face is just so... _weird_. “I mean... _technically_ I am—”

“Oh. Then you really have no excuse,” Kagome interrupts, to which he looks away and mutters something under his breath about how he can think of a _very_ big excuse—but he declines to share what, exactly, that excuse is, so he’s probably just making it up to keep from looking quite so ignorant. “Look, Sesshomaru is this village’s guardian and the caretaker of its shrine. The entire _province_ knows who he is. Now, let me ask you again: Who are you, and why do you look like him?”

But at some point while she was talking, the doppelganger lost interest and allowed his gaze to drift over to the old miko, skepticism gathering in the inky pools of his eyes. “Oi, Cyclops. I thought _you_ were the shrine’s keeper.”

“...and you’re not even listening to me, are you?” she grumbles.

Without even acknowledging that Kagome spoke, the miko retorts, “My name is ‘Kaede’, not ‘Cyclops’—as I have told you before.”

“Good for you. You the shrine’s keeper or not?”

Indignation simmers low in Kagome’s belly. Okay, so _maybe_ she intruded in the first place, but it isn’t as though she intends to stick around after she gets her answers. So to blatantly ignore her like this is _unbelievably_ rude! Honestly, between Lookalike Boy acting like a total _ass_ and this “Kaede” miko being so—

Wait.

Blinking, she looks over at the old miko, carefully scrutinizing her wizened features. The eyepatch slashes across one side of her face and conceals a presumably empty socket, but there’s something there. Something in the angle of her jaw and the slope of her nose and the shell-like curve of her ears. Something that...

Remembrance takes her back to the woods, to the canopy rustling deep and viridian-lovely all around. Mukade-jōrō’s fangs dripping crimson, towering over her latest victim. A little girl, no more than ten summers old, screaming as she clutches the blood-soaked side of her face. Goo spurting through the air as the soon-to-be-corpse was vanquished, loud screech of pain silenced almost as quickly as it began. Crouching over the injured party, reaching out to touch and comfort and soothe, but hesitant over the uncertainty as to whether such a tender action was allowed.

 _His_ arrival, just half a moment later, bow already drown—only to be dropped almost immediately in favor of rushing to the girl’s side, eyes sharp with uncharacteristic fear. It was, perhaps, the first time Kagome ever witnessed him abandon his weapon so readily.

“Kaede,” she repeats, dizzy. “You... that little girl...?”

Something oddly pleased suffuses across the old woman’s face, at that. “Aye. You remember me.”

An uneasy quiver goes through Kagome’s gut. “...how long was I in that seal?”

Heaving a stiff and heavy sigh through her nostrils, old Kaede (not Kaede-chan anymore, oh no no) turns to the rolls of bandages that have been left on the floor at her feet. One by one, she collects them. “Fifty years now, give or take.”

“...oh,” Kagome manages.

It feels as though the entire world whirls around her, then. As though she stands at the center of a wailing storm, the only pinpoint of stillness in a universe that knows nothing but constant and dizzying motion and not a moment of respite for the weary. That confidence that she allowed to stiffen in her bones seems to melt suddenly, becomes a quivering and watery mess within her marrow. She turns to face the doorway, massaging at her temple with one hand.

Fifty years—half a century, slipped away as though it were nothing. And perhaps it _would_ be nothing, if she lived through it. Her human blood slashes short what might have been an existence that spanned an entire millennium, but her youkai blood blesses her with vitality enough to outlast any mortal. Where most women will begin to wither and grey and lose their loveliness, youth will continue to glow in her cheeks and smooth itself creamily across her skin for centuries to come. And by virtue of her father’s blood, it will be even longer still before the earth stakes it claim on her bones.

But this is time lost. Time stolen. Time snatched away by _his_ cruel arrow. And that’s not _fair_.

“Ohhhhhh, so _that’s_ why your hair’s white,” comes Lookalike Boy’s voice, an unwelcome interruption.

Kagome casts him a glare over her shoulder. “I’ll have you know, it was like this before!”

Again, his brows pinch. “Wait, then... _How_ old are you?”

Of all the— “It’s a little _rude_ to ask a lady her age, don’t you think?”

“If _you’re_ a lady, then _I’m_ the emperor’s fucking cousin.”

And just like that, she officially does not like him. _Ugh! Guess it figures that he’s just as much of an ass as the original..._

It cuts through her, then—the sudden recollection. Back in the woods, darkness deep and Mukade-jōrō’s hiss rattling beneath her carapace as she towered over the defiant old woman. Bow drawn back and arrow jutting a sharp warning, feet planted firm into the ground with every scrap of tenacity that thrummed around in those old bones. Words exchanged in the night, a declared refusal to yield, because she wasn’t going to allow this inhuman _monster_ to take the Shikon-no-Tama that her brother—

...that her brother—

“Kaede,” Kagome says softly, which has the old miko glancing up at her, and the world blurs precariously at the edges. “Earlier. In the woods. To Mukade-jōrō. You... you said...”

There are words, deep in the bowels of her being, but they don’t come. They get trapped in the maze of her lungs, clog at the airways in her throat, fat with the sheer _impossibility_ of what she dares speak.

Surely there was no heavy truth weighing down such a ludicrous statement. No, of course not! Sesshomaru, for all his cold arrogance and deceitful cruelty, still burned like a star that crashed down from the heavens and the whole of the East was nothing more than the blackened, smoking crater he happened to land in. Every corner of Musashi knew the great and terrible power that deigned to grace them—the deadly priest with divinity in his marrow and enough might in his bones that he never needed more than a single arrow. And even if the world beyond his domain did not know his name, his ability, at least, reached them in hushed and awed whispers. Even the most ignorant man could recognize the lethal grace with which he moved, the liquid ease with which he fought, the nonchalant carelessness with which he vanquished whatever got in his way.

Defeat was no more known to him than mercy or hesitation, so foreign that he dared not even utter the word. He was sheer power refined to a bladed point, gleaming so beautifully you almost doubted it would cut you. He was a living weapon that waged war single-handedly against all youkai kind. He could never—

 _He_ could never—

“Oniisama left this world long ago,” old Kaede murmurs into the crackling of the fire, and Kagome’s chest _throbs_ where the arrow struck. “Shortly after he sealed you, he succumbed to his wounds and passed into the next life.”

Cold flowers deep beneath Kagome’s skin, sharp as the arrowhead that crashed through her ribs and stilled her beating heart. Frost blooms in her veins, arrests her bones, crystals her breath within her lungs. Something in the world has fractured, deep down at its most fundamental level. Truth seems a dubious thing now, a broken thing in her hands that slices against her palms and leaves her blood dribbling down her wrists and—no, no, no, it’s not the truth. Truth would never be so cruel, so cutting and merciless. Only lies can sting quite so terribly, and so logically, this has to be one.

It _has_ to be. What _wounds_ had he succumbed to? She saw nothing of the sort! True, there was... another scent in the air that chased his—but she hadn’t the mind to discern before the sakaki trunk slammed into her spine.

Thinking back, she recalls something pungent and coppery, but... No. This is _Sesshomaru_ , mightiest kannushi to ever grace Honshu. Only once had she ever seen him wounded, and it was only because he deigned to lower his guard against an opponent he thought already slain. And even then, it had not been a fatal wound, only one that made his ankle swell and made stumbling his way back to his village for treatment an annoyance, but not an impossibility. At worse, it hurt his dignity more than his flesh.

No, this... doesn’t make _sense_. When he arrived that morning, the air crisp with daybreak and a cruel glitter in his onyx eyes, there were no crimson interruptions in the flawless white of his jōe. Even through the acid-burn agony of his betrayal, she had not raised her claws against him. So how—

Ah, but then again, hours had passed between his showing his true colors and her tangling the Jewel’s beaded chain around her fingers. And he never was one to back down from a challenge...

The cold centers itself, crystallizes into a hard and heavy lump between her lungs. Kagome feels the solidness throb behind her ribs as she breathes in shakily, breathes out steady. “...so he takes his damn time fighting some youkai, gets himself wounded badly enough to threaten his life, and instead of seeking treatment, shows up just in time to finish me off, huh?”

Attacking her, making it clear that his intent has _always_ been to claim her life—and then rather than dare admitting defeat, or even pause to worry over his own life, he strikes her down _just_ as she was about to win. In the end, her death only served to maintain his damn _spotless_ _record_.

“Hmph! Sounds _just_ like that arrogant bastard.” Serves him right! She hopes he died in _agony_.

All the while, she feels the old miko—er, Kaede, oh wow—studying her back very carefully. Something in the silence presses down uncomfortably, an unspoken thing that turns it sticky and too-warm. But then it passes, almost as inexplicably as it came. Oddly, Kagome feels like she just passed some sort of test.

Meanwhile, fabric rustles as Lookalike Boy presumably redresses. Discomfort tickles at the edges of his scent. “Okay, so... I’m sorry about your loss and all, but I think it’s about time I—”

“Time you what?” asks Kaede (...Granny Kaede? ah, no).

“Go _home_ ,” he retorts peevishly. More fabric rustling. “Like, that thing with your brother sucks an’ all, but none of this shit really has anything to do with me, so I’m tappin’ out.”

Again, Kagome has to brace herself as she spins around on her heel. Thankfully, the doppelganger has covered himself with his white hadajuban(?), which now sports a large rust-colored patch at the hip where blood colored the fabric and then stiffened it, and he’s in the process of shrugging on the odd black haori. It removes a potential distraction, makes it easier to confront him—actually, no, it’s more than that. The likeness does not rattle her so much as it does embolden her, now. Maybe because the cold nestled deep in her chest quells her nerves and makes them too stiff to hum anxiously. Or maybe it’s because her last memory of _him_ , massive daikyuu flipped back from the force of the offending shot, gives her something to rage against.

“I still want to know why you look like him,” she declares frostily—the sudden bite in her voice makes him start a little, then look at her as though seeing her for the first time. “Why you _smell_ like him.”

Vague horror gathers on his face. “...you were _smelling_ me?”

“T— That’s not the _point_.”

“No, _hold_ on a second. You were fucking _smelling_ me?!”

Pressure builds behind her eyes. “ _Look_. Your scents aren’t just _similar_ —they’re _nigh_ - _identical_. And that’s not _normal_ —”

“ _Smelling_ me,” he mutters under his breath, tugging his odd haori sharply over his shoulders. “Fucking—Do you have any idea how fucking _creepy_ that is?”

Patience abandons her, then. There one second, gone the next. A brief and scarlet flash eclipses her vision for an instant—no more than the space between a heartbeat, really—and her body moves with its own will.

When the world snaps into focus again, he’s been hauled to his feet by the crushing grip she has on his shirtfront and his face is so close to hers that she can feel the shift in the air from the sharp breath he sucks in. His brows are arched high, half-lost in the feathered mess of his choppy bangs, and fright has stolen some color from his face. A shock-widened gaze darts down to briefly acknowledge the fanged points of her canines before immediately snapping back to meet her eyes. Vaguely, she notes the fact that he’s half a head taller (but just a little shorter than Sesshomaru, she muses grimly) than her—but he’s all fragile bones and papery skin and mortality she can crush in an _instant_ if she wishes, and she laughs internally at the notion of being intimidated. Her knuckles brush the glassy solidness of the Shikon-no-Tama where it sits hidden beneath his hadajuban, the hum of its ethereal power bright through the fabric as it tickles at her skin.

Shadows deepen across the curve of his skin, the hollow of his eye sockets. His eyes are fathomlessly dark—the same abyss that pulled her in the first time.

“ _You_ broke his seal.” It comes out as a growl, deep and gravely with a warning. “How did _you_ break a seal that _only Sesshomaru_ _himself_ should have been able to break?”

Shock is immediately displaced by indignation. “How the fuck am _I_ supposed to know? Maybe it was just a shitty seal!”

“A ‘shitty seal’ that held for _fifty years_?”

“Well how the hell long was it _supposed_ to last?”

 _Forever, probably_ , she thinks bitterly. Why Sesshomaru didn’t just kill her outright is a better question, actually. He isn’t—... _wasn’t_ —the type to do anything in fractions. But if he planned to leave her alive, then he probably meant to ensure that she would never twitch a muscle until the tree became dust ground beneath time’s heel. And perhaps the misery in that prospect answers the question for her.

Kagome opens her mouth to say something else, but old Kaede interrupts with a firm, “I might have a theory about that, actually.”

Something in those words rings with a scolding—with the underlaying sternness of _you will_ _release him this instant_. In Kagome’s periphery, the yumi leaning against the wall seems to hold a warning in its wooden curve and taut bowstring. This miko may not be Sesshomaru, but she is Sesshomaru’s sister and has holy powers in her own right. Though perhaps she would not be able to create a seal that can last half a century, she can still muster a sacred arrow if the need calls for it.

Sucking in a calming breath, Kagome uncurls her fingers from his shirtfront and withdraws her hand. Takes a single step back, allows a gap to widen between them. Takes another breath. Looks away, arms folding over her chest to keep her furious heartbeat from flying out of her ribcage.

Dammit. She lost her temper again.

An apology rises in her throat and gets tangled up there, comes out in a graceless mumble. Lookalike Boy doesn’t even acknowledge it.

Instead, he hastily swipes at his kosode with one hand as though cleaning it off ( _sorry my hand is so **filthy**_ , she thinks, despite this being neither the time or place). He sends a glance in Kagome’s direction that’s so brief she doesn’t have the chance to decipher it, then turns to old Kaede with a scowl. “What’s this ‘theory’?”

Old Kaede watches Kagome for a moment longer, her gnarled hands gone still around the bowl of poultice that she must have been putting away. The intensity in that single eye has a condemning weight to it, something that rivals the pressure of even Sesshomaru’s arrow diving between her ribs and spearing through her heart. Kagome looks at the wall, but she can still feel it, even after the miko resumes her task.

“Yasha,” Kaede begins, with a poignant gravity, which has Lookalike Boy arching a brow expectantly, “I suspect that you might be Sessho-oniisama’s reincarnation.”

...what.

No. No. _What_?!

Slowly, with something bordering on fear thumping behind her breastbone, Kagome turns to observe the lookalike—this “Yasha”, as Kaede calls him. She eyes him carefully, waiting for him to speak up or protest or deny it outright. He has to. There’s... There’s surely no _way_...

A rigidness has claimed him in the revelation’s wake, and it smooths out the petulant slouch from his spine and stiffens his shoulders until you could almost mistake the way he holds himself as dignified. Face perfectly blank and guarded, lips parted faintly, brows smooth. The roiling in those midnight eyes gone thoughtfully still.

In that moment, the phantom bears down with a sudden ferocity. Sesshomaru lives anew, all deadly grace and poisonous regality as he whispers through the beating forest shadow. Firelight dancing across his features looks like the dapple of golden rays streaming through an emerald canopy, tracing out every lovely curve of that deceptively beautiful face. The arch of his throat as he peers up into the branches, eyes the color of polished obsidian searching among the leaves for something with a rapt fascination. How his head will tilt ever-so-faintly to one side in unspoken amusement as he traps her beneath his gaze, the way he looks at her like something rare instead of wretched and wrong. If he just lets his hair down from its tie, spilling loose and ink-heavy and midnight-dark off his shoulders, white jōe instead of a black haori—

“Yasha” blinks hard, scowls incredulously, breaks the spell. “Re— What, like... past lives and shit?”

“That is the essence of it, yes,” replies Kaede carefully.

Incredulity steps in to provide a tentative shield. This is insane. Utter insanity given tactile form. Part of Kagome wants to laugh out loud, hard and bright until her belly aches from it, and the rest of her wants to scream, but somehow she ends up doing neither. All she can do is stare, with neither the will nor the power to look away.

Meanwhile, Lookalike Boy—Yasha—switches from incredulity to sudden indignation. “Okay, hag, I dunno what kinda fucking _game_ you’re playin’ here—”

“The powerful resemblance is the first indication,” Kaede interrupts, a forced patience behind her words. It occurs to Kagome, distantly, that this must be distressing for her as well—to see her strong and fearless older brother returned to her as this petulant brat. “Your spiritual abilities, for another—”

“My _what_.”

“—And then there’s the fact that you possessed the Shikon-no-Tama within your body.”

At that, he reluctantly dips into the collar of his odd hadajuban and fishes the beaded chain out from behind his collar. The Jewel gleams against his fingers, bright as a frantic star. “What, _this_? _This_ is probably just a—a crystallized tumor or something.”

Kagome wants to ask what a “tumor” is, or how anything other than the Shikon Jewel can look like the Shikon Jewel, but she just can’t stop staring. There’s no _way_ it’s true.

Breathing deep, as though steeling herself for some painful impact, old Kaede peers into the fire. Warm light washes her face in a haunting mysticism of shifting amber and lovely shadow. “Fifty years ago, with his very last breath, my brother ordered that the Shikon-no-Tama be burned with his body. Now, normally the Jewel is invulnerable, capable of withstanding any attempts at its destruction—but with all the time he spent purifying it, Oniisama was able to synchronize his own spiritual power with the Jewel’s, and forged a link between it and his own soul. Thus, when his soul departed from this world, it was able to do what none before it could, and remove the Jewel from this world as well.”

And that... makes sense. In a strange, tangled-up way. Sesshomaru, already silver-sharp and unfeeling steel when it came to everything he does, was even more severe and bladed when it came to the Jewel’s protection. Even when he left the village, as he did from time to time, he took it with him rather than leave it unprotected in its shrine. At times, that unshakeable devotion struck her as distinctly admirable, though even then she could recognize the subtle arrogance at its root—a belief that he, and only he, could protect the Jewel properly, and that everyone else who tried would surely fail.

But now... Kagome remembers, once—him, briefly separated from the Jewel, and the calm efficiency with which he tracked it down. Even her nose had failed to find it, yet he discerned its location with no trouble. Pressed by her unspoken question, he explained, cryptically, that being the Jewel’s guardian meant more than just keeping it from harm’s way.

_Darkness, deep violet and heavy around her shoulders as a cloak, gives her precious cover as she creeps towards the shrine. Just as the hallowed threshold comes into view, though, an arrow cuts clean through the air and narrowly sheers off the tip of her nose. There is no surprise in her as she whirls around to see him in the distance, a bright smudge against the night. He lowers his bow slowly, holy garb glowing like heaven in the moonlight._

_“Know this, Kagome,” he declares, and more than a warning, it is a promise, “I know the Jewel’s presence, and I know yours. Even if you should make off with it—I will find you, without fail.”_

Back in the present, there’s a soft scrape of metal. Kagome glances at the old miko as she takes up the fire-iron and pokes at the crackling fire once more. Puffs of embers escape a blackened log that breaks in half. “Because of this entwinement, the Shikon-no-Tama went where his soul went. And so when it returned, and reincarnated into you, it is natural that the Jewel followed.”

_If... If that’s true—_

She turns away, but studies this Yasha carefully from her periphery. The uncanny resemblance. The nigh-identical scent. The seal that fell apart beneath his fingertips. The Jewel residing as a stowaway inside his body. The same soul, living inside different bones...

At some point while she wasn’t paying attention, the lookalike—the _reincarnation_ , oh gods in the heavens _above_ —lowered himself back to the floor. Something has crushed him, made his bones bow again into that unflattering slouch and caused his shoulders to droop beneath some unseen weight. That limp, beaded chain around his neck spills down the front of his chest, where the Shikon Jewel hangs at the end as though trying to pull him straight down to an unseen bottom. He buries his face beneath his hands as though trying to hide from the damning resemblance between himself and the Jewel’s last protector. As she watches, he starts to massage roughly at his eyes, like he wants to dig them out so he never has to face his reflection again.

Kaede heaves a sigh, turning back to the bot boiling over the hearth. Carefully, she hooks her weathered hand around the handle and lifts it away from the heat, setting it down on the floor with a heavy _clank_ so it can cool. Bubbles continue to pop in an obnoxious lack of rhythm, like a defective heartbeat.

For a long, long moment, breathing feels like a taboo thing. Like crossing some invisible line, or treading upon a grave. Like sinning on a sacred ground.

Abruptly, Yasha jerks upright, starting everyone. “ _Or_ ,” he begins, a frantic denial shining in his eyes, the beads of the chain looking like spikes around his neck. “Some crazy doctor sewed this into my kidney when I was little or some shit. And nobody noticed for fucking years.”

Awkwardly, Kagome glances at old Kaede. The miko reaches out to retrieve the rag hanging off the edge of pot, saying nothing. Steaming water drips off the end that spent its time submerged. Kaede holds it over the pot, waiting for it to stop, or at least for it to cool enough that she can touch it without burning her hands. Redness bleeds out from the cloth, coppery with his life, with Sesshomaru’s life—their _shared_ life. Their blood even smells the same.

He adds, with a touch of hysteria, “‘Cause honestly, that makes _way_ more fucking sense than the shit _you’re_ sayin’ right now.”

“And where would this doctor have gotten the Shikon Jewel?” asks old Kaede dryly, sparing Yasha a sidelong glance. “Would he have journeyed to the afterlife and plucked it from my brother’s dead soul?”

“How in the fuck should _I_ know?! Go ask _him_!”

“‘He’ doesn’t exist,” Kagome points out.

“Y— You don’t _know_ that!”

There is a response to that, brimming blade-sharp and sour on her tongue, but she manages to swallow it back down. She didn’t come here to start a fight, after all. Unlike him, _she_ has some emotional maturity.

Solemnly, Kaede gives a slow shake of her head. “Nay, this is the only explanation to how the Jewel ended up in your possession.”

Frantic indignation continues to grow on Yasha’s face, like a shadow stretching longer as the sun continues to dip. He turns his glower to the hearth-fire, where his eyes narrow as though he blames it for every miserable thing that’s gone wrong in his life. There’s a hunch in his shoulders and a petulant curve in his spine, but the way the shadows flicker across the storm of his expression—

In a flash, Kagome is in the woods again, standing in a different place with a different person wearing the same face, oh _gods_ — “...you have the same the same glare.”

The illusion wavers, and the lookalike turns to her in bewilderment. “What?”

“That glare. He—He always... No one else could ever...” The words are ash in her mouth. Sesshomaru’s normally stoic expressions betrayed little, but his eyes spoke more than his voice ever did, and she’s never met anyone with a gaze that could puncture quite like his.

_Gods... You really **are** him, aren’t you?_

“Yes, I noticed too,” Kaede remarks, casting a sidelong glance in Yasha’s direction. “It’s much easier to see when he isn’t screaming his lungs out.”

“Okay!” Yasha suddenly springs to his feet, eyes blazing, the beaded chain swinging around his neck. “This is bullshit, and I’m going home. You guys have a nice life.”

To Kagome’s surprise, he _actually_ starts stomping towards the doorway, and she finds herself severely questioning his intelligence as she sidesteps to impede his path. “It’s... the middle of the night.”

A sharp, broken laugh bursts from his throat. “I ain’t stayin’ _here_!”

“So instead you’re going to traipse around the woods in the middle of the night, when ravenous youkai are at their most active, with the goddamn Shikon-no-Tama hanging around your neck?” She sends a pointed glance down to his chest, where the Jewel rests dangerously close to where his heart lays hidden behind his ribs. “Why not just take a sign that says ‘Hello, I’m tasty’?”

“I have to agree,” old Kaede pipes up, which has Yasha whirling around so fast that the end of his ponytail flies out like an obsidian blade, narrowly cuts sharp across Kagome’s cheek. “It’s too dangerous to go outside at this hour.”

“Fuck you. I just need to—” His voice falters, and the scarlet in his anger wavers as a mirage would. “Fuck. Jump in the damn well, I guess...?” In the time it takes Kagome to blink, befuddled by that assertion, the rage returns with a vengeance and he’s all but snarling as he declares, “—and then I’ll _never_ have to see either of you two _crazies_ again!”

Again, he attempts to surge towards the door, all righteous indignation knotted deep beneath his skin. The force of it would likely carry him sailing out into the indigo night—and right into the jaws of his own demise—if Kagome did not again step forward to impede his path once again. Her intervention has his eyes flashing anew, a sharp and furious spark, and she can tell he’s wrestling with the temptation to just shove her aside if she continues to try his threading patience. But it seems that her grabbing him so forcefully earlier has made him wary enough to reconsider.

She, meanwhile, tries to pretend she doesn’t see Sesshomaru in the dark smolder of his gaze and avoids it by staring at his nose instead. “Why would jumping in a _well_ get you home?” Suddenly, she remembers what Kaede said about the reduction in his blood volume, and she blinks, realization slotting cleaning into place. “Oh, crap, how woozy are you right now?”

“Eh?”

“Woozy. You lost blood. Ah, maybe you should sit back down...”

“ _Listen_ , you bitch—” He pauses, blinking. “Bitch,” he repeats, seeming to taste the word on his tongue, blatantly eyeing her ears in a way that has her fighting the self-conscious urge to flatten them against her skull. “You bitch. You _literal_ — Leaving. _So_ leaving.”

“Jumping down a well isn’t going to do anything but maybe break your leg,” she explains, patiently.

“Keh! So what if it fucking _does_? How in the _hell_ is that _your_ business?”

Technically, it isn’t. He’s a stranger in all the ways that count. Even if he is Sesshomaru’s soul, it inhabits different flesh and different bones and different hands that didn’t try to strike her down. Yes, he’d freed her, but she’d repaid that debt by slaying Mukade-jōrō, and it wouldn’t be remiss to just walk away, let him die in a ditch while she relishes in her newfound freedom.

But her gaze dips, pointedly, to the shining crystal dangling from his neck, and that right there is a _far_ more tactile reason to stop him from leaving.

Just as he seems to catch on, following her eyes to Jewel’s tantalizing glow, old Kaede speaks up, her confusion palpable, “By ‘the well’, you don’t mean _Bone Eater’s_ Well, do you?”

A pause anticipates the incoming denial. Kagome had never seen the well up close, but she’s heard enough of it to make her wary. Its ability to devour unnatural things was known through Musashi in the same way Sesshomaru’s reputation and the Shikon-no-Tama’s wish-granting power were spoken of in hushes murmurs. How youkai bones vanished into the steep descent of its darkness, how unholy things are sacrificed to sate its ravenous appetite. They say nothing that goes in ever comes back out. And for something to crawl free of it, and a _human_ no less...

But Yasha only rolls his eyes mightily. “No. The _other_ magical well.”

Something in Kagome tremors incredulously. She scents the air again, but nope, all she can catch from him is the earthy musk of mortality. Though his name means “yaksha”, there’s nothing supernatural or youkai about him.

“Child,” old Kaede begins slowly, eye so round it runs the risk of falling right out, “are you trying to say that you came here by climbing out of _that_ well?”

Discomfort seems weave itself into Yasha’s bones, and he shuffles in an attempt to displace it. “...you make it sound like I’m fucking _insane_ or something.”

To her amazement, Kagome succeeds in biting down a hysteric giggle. “I mean... You _realize_ how crazy it sounds, right?”

“ _Really_?!” he bursts out, and any resemblance between him and stoic, graceful Sesshomaru is lost to the hysteric indignation contorting his face. “ _That’s_ where you fucking draw the line? I had a magical marble stuffed in my liver. I almost got fucking eaten by a _youkai_.”—There’s something in the way he says the word “youkai” that implies this should be absurd, some keystone of insanity, as though youkai haven’t existed long before humanity rose from the mud and cleaned the filth off their flesh—“I’m talking to a girl with _dog ears_ who was _literally dead_ just this morning!”

“That’s—” Kagome starts.

Only for him to interrupt her with a brief, off-kilter laugh that makes the Jewel sway at the end of its chain. “But _me_ crawling out of a magic well is the peak of insanity here? _Ha_! Yeah, _fuck this_. I’m _out_!”

When he turns again towards the doorway, something desperately covetous in his gaze, she’s expecting him to try and bowl her over in his irrational attempt to flee from safety of these wooden walls and the hearth’s ocher comfort. But instead, he sidesteps hastily before making his run for it, trying instead to slip away before she can impede his path with her body again. The surprise at his actions (Sesshomaru would never have deigned to walked _around_ someone, would have forced them to move or trampled them under his heel first) causes a lag in her reaction time, leaves her blinking dumbly for a moment at the space he abandons. The end of his ponytail flashing in her periphery as he darts past her.

Not fast enough, though. He’s just three steps from the doorway when she half-turns to snag his bicep in her hand, leaving him to nearly trip over himself from the momentum. “ _Whoa_ there,” Kagome says, while he whirls around to _glare_. “Did you _miss_ the part where you could get eaten?”

“Fuck off!” His attempt to jostle his way to freedom is pointless, the sinew in her hands stronger than his entire body. When he realizes this, his eyes narrow warningly, and he snaps, “I blasted the centipede’s arms off, didn’t I?”

Perhaps it was meant as a threat, a warning to back away before he repeats the action and blasts her own offending arm clean off at the elbow—but he pauses suddenly, a brief scrunch of remembrance crossing his face. Maybe it’s occurring to him what really awaits him out there, creatures just like Mukade-jōrō and far worse slipping through the shadow. Yet, despite this, his shoulders remain squared stubbornly and he looks far from ready to surrender.

Ugh, men and their stubbornness. Kagome hopes her smile looks more indulgent than pitying. “Yeah, but you still needed me to bail you out in the end, didn’t you?”

His jaw flexes, all petulance and pride and lost patience. “Bitch, if you don’t fucking _let go_ —”

“You won’t get yourself killed?” she interrupts brightly. “Yes, I know. The proper response is ‘Thank you, oh kind and generous Kagome-sama, for worrying over my wellbeing’.”

“I can fucking take care of myself,” he retorts, so painfully adamant that she almost feels sorry for him.

“You want a bet?”

“Feh. I ain’t scared of you!”

Kagome eyes him for a long, long moment—the intransigence and the indignation that paint his familiar-but-not features, the recalcitrance in the clench of his jaw and the squaring in his shoulders, the scrunching wrinkles pinched between the furrow of his brow. For all the fire that burns in his eyes, crackling and sputtering with its irrational heat, there is an iron core hidden deep down within the glaring blaze. And if he truly does share the same soul as her would-be murderer, the same man who was more frigid steel than human, then mere words are not going to be enough to sway his will. She heaves a sigh.

_Looks like we’re going to do this the hard way, then._

And then, in one swift motion, she hauls him clean over her shoulder.

His voice breaks around a startled curse, tension turning the lines in his body to sharp, rigid angles. But even as his weight tries to press against her skeleton, she’s a little amused to find that he’s actually lighter than she anticipated—all breakable bones and fragile flesh, even she sometimes forgets how easy it is for humans to be overpowered—and needs only one arm snared around his waist to keep him locked firmly in place. At most, his being larger than her makes it a little cumbersome, because his torso spills down her back while his legs hang over her front, knees worryingly level with her ribcage.

Naturally, he starts to writhe against her hold. Curses in the air, hands fist angrily at the back of her chihaya, legs kicking frantically at empty air. A grimace twists her face as his knees jab repeatedly into her sternum while he twists and bucks. _Ow_. Hanyou or not, that’s going to _bruise_. Jerk.

“Kagome,” comes Kaede’s voice, sharp with an admonishment, while Yasha hisses curses and insults that would make a samurai blush, “release him now.”

“I’m being gentle,” Kagome assures her, whirling around fast enough that Yasha _yelps_ , the sound of it like a whiplash impact to her eardrum. She can feel his fists through the fabric of her robes, the bluntness of his fingers pressing against her spine.

Reproach darkens Kaede’s gaze, and she rises stiffly to her feet. “He’s still injured, if you recall.”

That he is. The wound has ended up closer than she would have liked, the sickly heat of it pressing pointedly against her shoulder. Though the herbal poultice tries to mask it beneath a hazy bitter-sour pungency, the copper in his blood stains the air. In her mind’s eye, she can still see the great crimson rope across his belly, where Mukade-jōrō’s coils threatened to crush and where bruises will paint his skin in lurid agony. All this writhing around must be igniting the pain of his injuries, but it doesn’t do anything to discourage him.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” he’s hissing, scrabbling at her back, her hair, her clothes, for purchase, “put me down put me down put me _down_!”

“Just so you know, if I wanted to, I could snap you like a twig,” Kagome tells him, just as she, in an act of mercy, releases him. “And I’m only a hanyou.”

Gravity takes the cue to flawless execute its rather cruel but inevitably necessary magic, and his yelp cuts the air as he slides free of her shoulder like water dripping off duck feathers. Given that he falls forward, his warm weight spilling across her spine before making impact with the ground, she assumes that the muffled _thump_ signals him landing on his back rather than his front. A fleeting glance over her shoulder at his sprawled form, his dark clothes and pooling raven hair a portrait of bemused blackness against the floorboards, confirms it.

Huffing something about youthful stupidity (even though Kagome is older her than her, and wow, that is a mind-screw), Kaede shuffles over to his side. Meanwhile, Kagome watches as the lookalike rolls gracelessly onto his stomach, a muffled groan resonating low in the back of his throat. Maybe he isn’t her would-be murderer, and perhaps their bones and flesh are completely different, but they have the same face and the same soul and there’s something immensely and vicariously amusing in seeming him reduced to such an ungainly state. Imagining the real Sesshomaru in the same position—all sprawling limbs and disgruntled glowering and spitting stray hair from his lovely mouth—satisfies the vindictive impulse in her belly, the ache in her ribs that still remembers his arrow’s puncturing bite.

Unfortunately, the real Sesshomaru would never allow himself to fall into such disgrace. And the real Sesshomaru would never, ever allow the Shikon-no-Tama to hang haphazardly around his throat, just begging to have it snatched away. No, _he_ would have never been so careless. _He_ would have _fought_.

Yasha, however, only pushes himself off the floor and fumes. “That’s it! I’m gonna _kill_ you, you fucking—”

Her body blurs as she spins on one heel and drops to a crouch before him, all in one motion. The sudden proximity of her face to his startles him so much that he scrambles to put distance between them, the whites of his eyes flashing in alarm. He’s not Sesshomaru—his only weapon is the death in his glare, the intensity behind his gaze. But beyond that, he’s all bluster and nothing to back it up.

The smile she gives him is a narrow, bright thing with her lips peeled back _just_ enough for fang to show. “Kill me, huh? Funny, considering I overpowered you _pretty_ quickly.”

“ _Bitch_ ,” he hisses.

Ignoring him, she goes on, “Maybe you _did_ blast off Mukade-jōrō’s arms—but even then, that didn’t kill her, and she’s _far_ from the strongest thing out there. _I’m_ hardly the worst thing you’ll face at this time of night, either. Between the Shikon Jewel and the scent of your blood, you’re bound to attract all sorts of predators that have a _lot_ less qualms about killing you. You don’t even stand a chance against _me_. Now imagine running into something _worse_.” Realization cuts deep across his face, finally piercing through his adamance and causing his certainty to waver in a way Sesshomaru’s never would. She tilts her head innocently to one side. “You’d be a sitting duck, tough guy. _Still_ think you can take care of yourself?”

Shakily, he sits back on his haunches and glowers darkly, but says nothing.

“Alright,” Kaede intervenes, “I think you’ve made your point—”

“So how about this?” she says, clapping her hands together sharply and ignoring the suspicion sharpening in Kaede’s single eye. “If you’re really _that_ desperate, I can escort you. I know the woods like the back of my hand, after all, and with my strength, I make a pretty decent bodyguard. I’ll fight off all the big bad youkai that come your way, and you go home without a scra—”

A rough hand fisting her chihaya interrupts her. In addition to cloth, her hair ends up gripped as well, so when she’s tugged quite unceremoniously to her feet, there’s a sharp pressure that pulls at her scalp and drags a yelp from her throat. By the time she recovers from the initial shock enough to frown at her culprit, old Kaede’s eye has already narrowed into something bladed and her mouth has become a sharp, grim line of disapproval.

“And I suppose you’ll request the Jewel as payment?” comes the old miko’s reproachful remark. The sharpness of her gaze seems to cut right down to the bone.

Realizing that she’s just been _scruffed_ —just like a _puppy_ , how _humiliating_ —Kagome jerks herself free and buries her indignation behind a casual sniff. “It’s perfectly fair! _Especially_ considering I already saved his life before.”

“Absolutely _not_.”

“You really have no say in this, miko-sama,” Kagome returns, and tries to forget that this same old woman was once a little girl that smiled up at her, with eyes brightened by tentative admiration, because sentimentality is what got her pinned to that damn tree in the first place. “ _You_ aren’t the Jewel’s guardian.”

Choosing to ignore that comment (oh, _very_ mature), Kaede turns instead to Yasha, who has not moved from his spot and continues to eye Kagome with a newfound wariness. She offers a wrinkled hand out to help him up. “You’ll be staying here tonight, child.”

That snaps him back to the present, and he quickly scrambles to his feet—only to put a fair distance between the miko and himself. Kagome suppresses a smirk at the way Kaede’s face drops in befuddlement, at the way distrust burns in his obsidian gaze.

“The _hell_ I am!” Yasha snaps, something like incredulous laughter threading his words. “You threw some weird powder in my face, and then had me fucking locked up in a hut all day!”

“I already explained—”

“That it was ‘necessary’? No _way_ , lady. I barely know you, and you’ve been keepin’ secrets the whole time. How long were you sitting on this ‘reincarnation’ shit, anyway?” When Kaede only winces, perhaps guiltily, he lets out an exasperated snort. “Keh! That’s what I _thought_! Well, I’m not playin’ this game, whatever the hell it is.”

To that, the miko can only stare at him, flummoxed.

Out of respect for the sweet little girl Kaede used to be, Kagome is mindful in hiding the triumph in her smile. “Alright then! If we’re going, we should probably leave now, before—”

“Fuck that!” he interrupts, flashing a particularly foul glare her way. “I’m not fucking going _anywhere_ with you.”

“Ehhhh? What did _I_ do?”

“You _literally_ said you could snap me like a twig!”

“O-Only if I _wanted_ to.” He didn’t _actually_ interpret that as a threat, did he?

“You _also_ lectured me while I was about to get fucking _eaten_.”

“Because you were trying to _negotiate_ with the thing about to eat you!”

“Whatever! You killed the centipede no problem, so how the hell do I know you won’t try to kill _me_? No, fuck that. I’m not going with you into the woods so you can dump my body in a fucking ditch!”

_Un **believable**. I save his life, and he— Y’know what? I don’t even know why I’m surprised. He’s Sesshomaru’s reincarnation, after all, and it’s not like **he** ever trusted anyone, much less something less than fully human. Ugh. Serves me right for getting my hopes up, I guess..._

Recovering from the rejection, Kaede pulls a dubious frown. “Well then where, exactly, do you presume to spend the night, if not here? Many other buildings are damaged from Mukade-jōrō’s attack, in case you didn’t recall. And I doubt you will find the storage sheds, even if they are in-tact, any more comfortable than here. Unless you plan to sleep in the shrine?”

To Kagome’s incredulity, Yasha actually pauses a moment, seeming to genuinely consider it, then throws his hands up. “Sure! Why not? It’s got a roof.”

_...he’s not serious is, he?_

No. No, he _couldn’t_ be. No matter how much frustration may brim in his bones or how loathe he may be to the idea of breathing the same air as them, he couldn’t actually be considering that. No matter what petty impulses throbbed in his marrow, he surely knew better than actually make mundane a place where a kami’s blessing steeps into the wood and encroach upon sacred ground on such a whim. Even Sesshomaru, for all the arrogance beating thick in his blood, knew better than to cross such boundaries and reduce holy ground to a simple vehicle of vindictiveness.

So Kagome waits, patiently, for him to retract his statement. Waits while he pivots hard on his heel, punctuating an end to the conversation with the show of his back. Waits—

Until he’s at the doorway and throwing the curtain aside with a rattle and oh gods, he’s _actually_ — “That’s— _unbelievably_ sacrilegious!” she splutters after him.

He doesn’t even spare her a backwards glance—the beaded chain has swung around his throat, the Shikon-no-Tama settled between the sharp peaks of his shoulder blades. His ponytail swings like a pendulum, hiding-and-revealing its pink-white glow in a choppy rhythm. “Well, I ran outta fucks to give two hours ago. _Goodnight_.”

With that, the curtain falls closed behind him.

Immediately, Kaede starts after him, the curtain giving a scratchy rustle as she hastily throws it aside, and the inky night presses against the doorframe as she shouts, “Boy, you are _not_ sleeping in the kami’s domain!”

“You ain’t the boss of me!” comes the answering shout, shrill and defiant and so—so—

So _juvenile_.

Juvenile, in every way Sesshomaru never _was_ and never _would_ _be_. Because Sesshomaru’s very being was comprised of pride and dignity, ingrained into the marrow of his hallowed bones until it stiffened his spine and he lost the ability to lower his head from the aloft position it perpetually maintained. He would never stoop to such petty impulses, would never indulge in such idiocy—in fact, she very much doubts he even had the capacity for it. He was a creature forged within the furnace of a single purpose, to which he devoted himself to religiously and would allow nothing else to dare infect his noble veins.

Perhaps, it was this very intensity that drew her to him so, in the beginning. Eyes so focused that you couldn’t help but wonder at the direction he was looking—and if, maybe, you could meet him there, when all was said and done.

But this boy—this “reincarnation”—has none of that nobility, that purpose, that pride. His eyes smolder more than they pierce, all relentless heat that never catches a spark. He wears anger like a second skin, bristling behind mundane bones. He slouches like a petulant child, huffs and fumes and doesn’t have a single scrap of grace in his entire body. He—

“Yasha, get back here this instant!”

“Sorry, can’t hear you, not _listening_ ~!”

...is _still_ arguing with Kaede.

Her stomach heavy with dread, Kagome wanders over to the curtain. By peering over the swooping angle of old Kaede’s sagging shoulder, she catches a glimpse of Yasha’s silhouette as he veers sharply for the torii gate nearby. With his inky hair and his shadow-hued clothes, he nearly melts into the darkness—just a haze against the gloom. The phantom of someone he is not. Only the light of the Shikon Jewel, a soft and diffuse glow, adds some dimension to his form and instills some realness into him.

What she _can_ see, quite clearly, is the audience his shouting has attracted. Torchlight that creeps in from the distance, amber pinpoints that spill warmly across the planes of bewildered faces. Villagers, having reluctantly abandoned bemoaning the damage to their homes in the name of investigating the commotion that attracted them so. Most are women, faces soft with confusion but eyes keen with a prying curiosity—the kind that belong to people who have nothing better to do than wedge themselves into the business of others, chitter secrets to the wind in the name of amusing themselves. A few, however, are men that Kagome vaguely recognizes from the woods, with their faces sporting garish bruises that she doesn’t remember being there before. Or, maybe she just wasn’t paying attention, then.

A wide arc is formed some ways away from the hut, maintaining a respectful and unobtrusive distance from the battle of wills. Rather than intervene, they are content to observe—and then gossip about it later.

“ _I_ am your elder!” Kaede hollers from the doorframe, shrill with exasperation.

Yasha flashes a glance over his shoulder, the light of Shikon Jewel illuminating some dangerous impulse in his dark eyes.

 _Don’t say anything stupid_ , Kagome prays. **_Please_** _don’t say anything stupid. If you really are Sesshomaru’s reincarnation, then don’t—_

“Oh yeah? Well, _I’m_ the reincarnation of your _elder brother_. Which puts _me_ in charge of _you_.” He flashes a hand out, his middle finger extended sharply. “So suck on _that_ , hag!”

Kagome tries, valiantly, to keep herself upright—but the weight of the exasperation that bowls into her is too great, and she barely catches herself from collapsing face-down onto the floor. The villagers, meanwhile, break out into a buzz of bewildered murmuring as that statement is left to hang in the air, punctuated by the staccato stomp in Yasha’s retreat.

Great! By tomorrow morning, the whole village will be tangled up in twelve different layers of gossip. Hope he’s damn proud of himself.

With a sigh that seems to resonate deep within the sagging in her bones, Kaede withdraws from the doorframe. “That... willful—”

“ _Idiot_ ,” Kagome finishes, somewhere between a hiss and a groan. Pressure builds treacherously behind her eyes. She can’t believe this is real. It has to be some kind of dream or something. Some nightmare, a terrible figment of her imagination meant only to warp reality. Because to think that Sesshomaru, the paragon of unshakable valor and dignity, would be reincarnated into someone so thoughtless and temperamental and ungainly, into such a complete and utter _brat_ —

Maybe it would have been better if she stayed in the damned tree. At least then, she could have preserved her mental image of _him_ just a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, finally getting into the meat of Kagome's perspective! Honestly had a lot of fun with this, so I hope you all enjoyed.
> 
> Glossary:  
> Daikyuu = a Japanese longbow; a larger and more asymmetric variant of the yumi  
> Hadajuban = thin, old-style garment worn under kimonos as a sort of undershirt; here, Kagome is mistaking Yasha’s collared shirt for a hadajuban  
> Haori = old-fashioned garment best described as a kimono-top/jacket; here, Kagome is mistaking the jacket of Yasha’s school uniform for a haori  
> Kami = a god or divine spirit  
> Yumi = a Japanese bow
> 
> As usual, comments and questions are welcome!
> 
> Sincerely,  
> Tsuki


	4. For Want of a Keeper

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody! Sorry, I know it's been *checks notes* roughly a month. Oops. This chapter ended up longer than I intended, so between the initial writing and then the editing, it took some time. Thank you all for your patience!

Sleeping on the floor, Yasha decides, is fucking terrible.

The shrine’s wooden floorboards are unforgiving. His temples are saved from bruising only by his wadded-up uniform jacket acting as an impromptu pillow—which is hardly comfortable, because the fabric is still stiff with dried blood and the iron-tang only serves as a painful reminder of his recent near-death experience. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the stupid marble acts as a nightlight of the worst kind, its candy-pink radiance a constant impediment to blissful unconsciousness.

At some point, he finds himself holding the Shitty-no-Tama up to his face and hissing, “I will literally _pay_ you to fucking _stop glowing_.”

Somehow, that works. The next thing he knows, the pale, blighted brightness of daylight is drifting in—and there’s a sandaled foot prodding at his temple.

A groan builds in his throat as he dares to raise his head. Sleep crusts the corner of his eyes, his vision a hazy mess of nonsensical color. Looming over him is a silhouette that offers a partial but blissful obstruction against daylight’s onslaught, a bleary clash between holy white and blaring red. Maybe if dreamland were not pleading for his return, he might have cared enough to figure out what it means.

He lets his head drop, closes his eyes. No alarm clock, no school—no reason to endure the hellish indignity of waking up before noon. Maybe he can still fall back asleep...

The foot prods at his temple again. Gentle enough not to hurt, annoying enough to rouse. He bats it away halfheartedly.

“So the kami didn’t smite you for your blasphemy,” someone remarks flatly. “Good.”

Scowling, Yasha blinks up at the figure. Clarity sharpens reluctantly around a wrinkled face, a black eyepatch shielding one eye, a chapped mouth curved into a wry frown.

Fucking... “ _Why_.”

“It’s daybreak,” Old Lady Cyclops returns dryly, as though that weren’t perfectly obvious.

Wordlessly, he rolls over. And immediately regrets it—aching pain blooms crimson-hot along the length of his spine in hard, tight knots. It is joined quickly by the dull throbbing in his injuries from last night, the sore tenderness buried deep beneath his skin and the fire-bright reminder of the hole in his side.

Ughhhh. This is what he gets for sleeping on the damn floor, isn’t it? _Fuck_. Last fucking time he doesn’t sleep on a mattress. Oh, a mattress sounds nice... What he wouldn’t give for his bed, for a decent pillow.

“Come now. Do you plan to sleep the whole morning away, boy?”

_What I wouldn’t give for a fucking door to slam in her face._

Disapproval makes her gaze weigh upon him like a tactile thing, and Yasha finds himself counting the seconds until she leaves. Inevitably, she’ll get bored and go back to her business and leave him to the bliss of sleep. Any moment now...

 _Finally_ —her footsteps begin a retreat, punctuated by a thoughtful hum. “Very well. I shall have to eat breakfast alone, then.”

Blearily, he sits up. “What was that about breakfast...?”

* * *

“So... I’ve been wondering,” Yasha begins, poking discontentedly at his bowl of hot rice gruel with his chopsticks. It’s bland and thick and looks more like melted glue than anything edible, settles too-heavy in his gullet and is redeemed only by the fact that it’s fresh—overall, not worth getting out of bed for. Damn that hag.

The hag in question, meanwhile, is in the process of wetting a rag that she intends to smear fresh herbal poultice over. Something about how his injuries will heal faster if they’re cleaned regularly and redressed. If not for the fact that she basically lured him with subpar food (and he’s kicking himself nine ways to Sunday for the fact that it fucking _worked_ , too), he might have almost been impressed with her competence as a physician. Like, she may not have a fancy degree hanging on her wall or shelves lined with pill bottles, but the fact that decent medical knowledge extends this far into the past is kind of astounding. And here he was thinking that papercuts would be lethal or some shit.

At the sound of his voice, she glances up from the clay jar of foul-smelling medicinal plants, a brow arched placidly. “Yes?”

Something about having her gaze on him wilts the confidence in his bones. He’s thrust uncomfortably back to last night’s conversation, the revelations that rattled through his being—the reminder that, in another life, this old lady was his little sister.

Needless to say, the wall becomes very interesting, right about then. “When is this?”

A beat of silence. He can feel her blinking at him in confusion. Unease prickles at the back of his throat.

_Ugh, this is gonna be like that whole “wait, you came outta a **magic well**?!” shit last night, isn’t it? It totally is. Goddammit. Like I don’t get enough fucking judgement at **home**..._

Finally, she goes, “Did you say ‘when’?”

“Yeah, ‘when’.” When she doesn’t stop eyeing at him, the sharpness of her suspicion threatening to cut him open, he adds, nastily, “Keh, your hearing finally startin’ to give out, hag?”

That does the trick. Her single eye loses its pointed scrutiny and falls half-lidded with exasperation. Glaring is always infinitely preferable to staring, in his opinion. “If you must know, it’s late into Satsuki now. Move your hadajuban aside, please.”

“Sa...” _May. Late May. She thinks I asked her what goddamn month it is._ “That’s... _seriously_ unhelpfu— _ow_!”

Stinging pain bites deep into his nerves, singes through his blood like vinegar dripping into an open cut. He hisses, flashing a glare over at the old woman. One wrinkled hand presses a rag grimly against the tear in his side, the herbs burning. She fucking got him when he wasn’t paying attention. _Damn_ that hag!

“Hold still, and try to relax. Tensing your muscles only makes it hurt more.”

Keh. As if he isn’t _already_ aching all over. Overnight, a swathe of horrific bruising erupted across the place where the centipede’s coils threatened to crush him, and just looking at it is enough to make him wince—never mind the painful tenderness that’s settled in. He looks down now at where she’s minding his wound, only to be rewarded by a lovely view of the terrible blue-black masterpiece of almost-death painted across his skin. _That’s_ gonna be pretty hard to explain once he gets back home...

To distract himself, he jabs at the bowl of cooling rice-gruel. His chopsticks sink deep into the gluey whiteness, threaten to get stuck forever. “I _meant_ —what _year_ is this?”

Air tickles at his wound as she peels the cloth away. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“ _What_ do you not understand about—” And then Yasha remembers—the seventh grade, history class, half-sleeping through one classmate reading her essay aloud at the front, describing how the solar calendar that hailed from the West was adopted by Japan sometime in the Meiji Period. But if the Meiji Period hasn’t happened yet...

_Oh, perfect! They’re still using the old-ass Chinese lunar calendars, aren’t they? The whole concept of BC and AD hasn’t even fucking arrived yet. Fan-fucking-tastic._

Stifling a groan, he sets his bowl aside. It’s gone cold and unappetizing, anyway. “Okay, uh—let’s try this. Who’s in charge right now?”

“In charge?” she repeats with a light chuckle. The kind that old folks give little kids when they ask a nonsensical question, like how do storks know where to deliver the right baby.

Frankly, he doesn’t see what’s so funny. The gengou system is, like, fucking _ancient_ , so it must have been a thing back then, right? ...whenever “back then” is. “Yeah! Like, is there an emperor? A shogunate? What poor asshole’s running Japan right now?”

For a moment, she peers at him questioningly. Though the thin-lipped smile she offers him is a tight, indulgent thing, there is a keenness in her eyes that seems to search his face for answers hidden beneath his skin. Like she’s trying to peel back his flesh so she can gaze at the secrets written on his bones.

Just as the urge to fidget starts to win him over, she replies, carefully, “I have heard there are men by the name of Ashikaga that claim to rule this country, but all _I_ have seen is warring daimyo engaging in constant squabbles over petty territorial disputes.”

Okay? That’s... _something_ to go off of, at least.

_Ashikaga... Okay, the Ashikaga shogunate is Muramochi Period, hands down. Shit that’s—fuck. **Really** fucking far back. But then, she makes it sound like they aren’t all that active, so. The system collapsed at some point, right? I mean, a buncha daimyo runnin’ around unchecked isn’t something that happens if you have people in charge to shut that shit down. So this must be sometime after the shogunate fell apart..._

_So let’s see—Ashikaga, warring daimyo, power vacuum... Wait a minute. That... kinda sounds like—_

“Sengoku Period,” he realizes aloud.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Never mind.” It’s actually surprising just how steady his voice comes out, belying the frantic churning in his guts. He’s shit at exact dates, but if he remembers right, then the Sengoku Period was roughly—

_Five hundred years ago. Mother **fucker**._

Why did he think that would _help_ , somehow? It doesn’t. It _so_ fucking doesn’t. If anything, the chasm between himself and home—home! 1996, oh how he _longs_ for it—only seems to grow all the wider. True, the infinity has been sheered off, and the enormity diminished by a definite understanding, but even one century into the past is a dizzying prospect that leaves his heart lurching queasily. Now there’s five whole centuries, fifty decades, stacked atop each other one-by-one and looming over him in a precariously-swaying tower that threatens to topple over at any minute and bury him beneath the rubble.

“It seems to be healing well.”

Old Lady Cyclops’s voice cuts clean through the ringing in his ears. At once, he’s thrust dizzily back into the present.

To his bewilderment, he finds that he has a vice grip around the beaded chain draping his neck—or, more specifically, it’s the Shikon-no-Tama thingy hanging at the end that has found itself on the receiving end of his white-knuckled fist. There’s an ache in his palm from the bite of his nails as he slowly uncurls his fingers.

Would someone like to remind him _why_ he’s still holding onto this thing again?

Shaking his head—there are more important things to think about—he turns and blinks over at the old miko. “Whaddja say?”

“Your wound.” While he was nearing another breakdown, brought to the precipice of gripping terror as it dawned on him _just_ how far back in time he’d fallen—she finished up with her herbal voodoo, put away her instruments, and then finished up by slathering a fresh bandage over the tear. “I’d give it a few more days and it should be completely healed.”

He stares incredulously. “A few more— Lady, are you _high_? I’ve had _bruises_ that take longer than that to go away— _this_ is a fucking _hole_!”

“Yes,” she says, unfazed, “but ‘tis a youkai’s wound.”

Right... Youkai are an actual thing now. Not just creepy stories that Gramps tells customers in order to sell more charms and talismans. No, there are living, breathing monsters out there that apparently enjoy the taste of human flesh. And also, for whatever reason, want this stupid pearl that came flying out of his liver! _Wonderful_.

Fabric rustles as he buttons his shirt back up. The stupid collar is all wonky, too. “Okay. Youkai bite. And that makes a difference _how_ , exactly?”

Old Lady Cyclops claps the lid back onto her clay jar. The one that keeps her pungent poultice from fermenting where people can smell it. Maybe she got too strong a whiff when he wasn’t looking. “For most people, it wouldn’t. But for those like yourself, it very much does.”

“You lost me.”

“The power that lives within youkai is known as youki,” she explains, with a surprising patience—which that tells him this is something she’s been preparing for a while now. Oh _goodie_. “Though not necessarily wicked, it is not naturally possessed by humans, and thus acts as a taint of sorts. As such, it runs contrary to the purifying power within men and women of holy stature—that power being reiryoku. Those who are naturally gifted with reiryoku can unconsciously dispel youki within wounds they might have suffered at a youkai’s hands.”

Apprehension flutters in the back of Yasha’s mouth, but he swallows it back down. When he reaches to collect his jacket, his fingers curl around the stiffened patch where his blood dried across the fabric. “And... what does that have to do with me?”

Rather than answer immediately, Old Lady Cyclops reaches out to press a wrinkled palm to his side, just above where a messy hole was ripped into his shirt by the centipede’s fangs. Evidence of last night’s pandemonium has left a massive stain that smears across almost the entirety of his side, drenching the hem in color before reaching up to tickle at the bottom bone in his ribcage. With stark red-brown spanning so widely across white cotton, it occurs to him, quite suddenly, that wounds that bleed _that much_ aren’t something people walk away from.

Come to think of it, with how deep the bite was, he should be in a _lot_ more pain than he is now... shouldn’t he?

“My brother was a kannushi of exceptional power,” Old Lady Cyclops begins, which has Yasha wincing at the unpleasant reminder of the whole reincarnation-mind-fuck. “And based upon the events of last night, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that you have inherited some portion, if not all, of that exceptional power. Perhaps you are not aware of it, and perhaps it is extremely unrefined, but your body is brimming over with reiryoku—thus, you are recovering more quickly.”

Just as the weight of her hand starts to prickle through the fabric, she draws back. Frowning, he peers down at the spot where she touched, and at the ragged tear in his shirt that sits just underneath. Thinking back, the bleeding went from a crimson spray to a sluggish leak by the time Dog Girl cut the centipede-bitch down. Then, by the time they made it back to the village, it was just throbbing pain, and no trace of the scarlet spillage from before...

Something must show on his face, because Old Lady Cyclops offers him a smile that looks almost apologetic. “You may not like it, Yasha, but in all the ways that count, you are a kannushi.”

“Yippee,” he deadpans, shrugging his jacket on. Good to know they’re back on the bullshit wagon. At least he can take comfort in the fact that Gramps isn’t here to get all encouraged.

_Keh. Right about now, the old geezer’s probably trying to harass people into buying omikuji. Or cleaning out the shrine for the umpteenth fucking time, the anal git. Huh. Wonder if Souta ever ended up getting him to come to the wellhouse sessha... Wait, is time even passing over there? It’s been a day here, but over there—ugh, if it is, Mom’s probably started doing that whole stress-cleaning thing._

_Shit. They must be worried..._

With daylight paining the walls chipper yellow-white and no ropes biting into his wrists, the hut doesn’t feel half as imprisoning as it did yesterday. Gone is that claustrophobia, replaced by something almost comfortable and mundane in a way that he can’t help but find welcoming. Like it’s trying to persuade him into staying indefinitely.

Which is _not_ happening. The Jewel bumps against his chest like an admonishment as he releases the chain. “So, hey. It’s morning now, and I’m feeling a _lot_ better, so I think... uh, maybe I should get goin’.”

When he makes a move to get up, though, her hand claps his shoulder like a vice. “Between your injuries and the Jewel’s attracting danger, going anywhere near the forest or the Bone Eater’s Well is out of the question.”

Frustration flares in his belly, scratchy-hot, as he smacks her hand away. “How many times do I gotta say ‘I need to go home’ before you start fucking _listening_?”

But her gaze lacks any sort of compromise, that single eye sharpened to a flinty blade that seems intent on spearing him through the ribs and keeping him trapped in this place. “I assure you, this is no matter of personal intransigence. The Shikon-no-Tama cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of those who would abuse it.”

_Gah! Shikon-no-Tama this, Shikon-no-Tama that! What is the fucking **deal** with this stupid— Alright, screw this. _

The beads snag on his hair as he rips the chain off, resistant to the notion of separation. It takes a minute to tangle his way to freedom before he’s allowed to throw the damn thing against the floor. The Jewel makes a glassy _clink_ against the floorboards. Candy-pink light bruises the wood. “ _There_. Can I go home _now_?”

Unfortunately, the dusty old crone makes absolutely no move to pick it up. Just eyes it with an unspoken sorrow, a lament destined to forever go unvoiced. “If it were that simple, this could be resolved far more easily. Unfortunately, _you_ are the Jewel’s keeper.”

“And I’m givin’ it to you!” He scoops it back up by the chain, holds it by the end so that the pink-white crystal hangs suspended as a star in the heavens. The Jewel ends up level with both their gazes—and from where he sits, it falls over the damaged side of her face, so that its brightness is framed by the stark black of her eyepatch. “I, Yasha Higurashi, bestow upon you all rights and responsibilities as keeper of this dinky little rock that came outta my spleen. We good?”

“As I said,” she returns, words hardening as she draws back on her haunches, “it is not that simple. The link my brother forged between himself and the Jewel was rooted in his very soul. Because you share that soul, this means you are linked to it as well.” With a wrinkled hand, she reaches out to briefly cradle the Jewel in her fingertips, tender as a mother to her wayward child—and when she releases it, the force sends it swinging back towards him. “And as long as that is the case, the best one to be charged with its protection is you.”

“Then _you_ forge a link!” he snaps, tossing the chain towards her. It lands primly in her lap, bright pink against red hakama.

Heaving a great and gusty sigh—something that comes deep from the recesses of her lungs, deep within her bones, makes him think of those times when Gramps expressed his fathomless disappointment in Yasha’s general disinterest with all things old-fashioned—the old woman scoops the Jewel into her hand. In the wrinkles of her palm, it looks painfully small, a dainty and delicate thing forged from pink candy-glass that she, with her feeble grandma strength, could crush if she squeezed too hard. With daylight stripping the darkness away and smothering the dainty, unearthly glow it gives off, it doesn’t look half as mystical as it did last night, either. Looking at it now, he can hardly believe that it had the capability to awarding monsters so much power, or that it had lain dormant beneath his flesh for god-knows-how-long. Even hung upon a decorative chain, as it is now, like some kind of ceremonial ornament, he can’t help but think it’s way too tiny and way too mundane to cause so much trouble.

And some long-dead priest was required to sacrifice his life in the name of its protection? Ridiculous. Yeah, Yasha is gonna pass on that _so_ hard.

Something in the way Old Lady Cyclops studies the dumb pearl speaks to an ancient sadness, a wound that never fully healed. “I cannot, for I have but a fraction of the power Sessho-oniisama did. Only one who could match or surpass him can possibly overshadow the link he created.”

“So _find_ someone!” Yasha explodes. What, is he talking to a fucking _wall_?!

“‘Tis easier said than done,” comes the sharp retort. “Oniisama was unrivaled in life. In death, that is still very much the case.”

Blood beats loud in his ears, his pulse seeming to swell inside his veins until his skin feels too-hot and too-tight. He feels shrink-wrapped around his own bones, feels crushed beneath frustration and fury and the blistering temptation to just run headlong for the entrance before she can catch him. Just because it’s important to _her_ doesn’t mean _he_ has to give two fucks what happens to the Shitty-no-Tama one way or the other. There has to be _someone_ around here who’s going to take him seriously! Someone who can break this supposed “link” between himself and the fucking rock and let him go on his merry way. Just introduce him to that person, and then everything’s good. Is it _really_ so hard?

Unbidden, he finds himself flashing back to the darkness within the woods, to the condescension that Dog Girl leveled his way as he reached out for the arrow. His attention had been elsewhere at the time, but pieces of her lecture find themselves caught in his memory like splinters, painful for something so small. Something about being the most powerful of his generation, about the impossibility of Yasha breaking his seal.

Which he had—by virtue of sharing a soul with the seal’s castor. That, and that alone, evidently. And if he were anyone else’s reincarnation—

_...I probably would have gotten eaten._

And the way Dog Girl _talked_ about him—the dead man, the one that Yasha looks just like and smells just like (apparently) and shares a glare with—was more akin to praising a mythic figure than speaking about any living person. Hell, what she said about the seal made it sound permanent, like he would have pulled and pulled until his hands were bloody with the effort and even that wouldn’t have been enough. So there must have been so real amazing power behind it then, right?

Then there was the visible shock that slackened her skeleton when she learned of the fact that this guy had keeled the fuck over in the first place. How her face changed, as though the prospect were impossible—as though death were something that he alone should have been exempt from. How stricken her voice had been, like someone forced to watch a mighty mountain range that sloped graceful on the horizon reduced to unsightly rubble. It was almost painful to watch, admittedly, and he might have been a bit more sympathetic if she hadn’t pulled that whole lifting him up and spinning him around stunt right after.

Now there’s the hag’s words. Her making it sound like finding someone on the same caliber would be like trying to pick out the brightest stars in the heavens. Like there are _literal_ millions, but only a few are brilliant enough to leave pinpricks dancing on the undersides of your eyelids after you’ve looked away.

Funny thing about stars, though. Even when they wink out, their light continues to persist for eons to come.

So... what if it really _is_ that hard? If this guy was really as powerful as everyone makes him out to be, holding a rare and terrible might within him, then finding someone to match that would be... No, it couldn’t be _that_ hard, right? Honshu alone is fucking huge, there has to be _plenty_ of people they can get into contact with who—

Ah.

No phones. No internet. No cars or trains.

No quick, easy way to find out whose ranked highest among holy people in the country. And no quick, easy way to get them over here so they can break the stupid link.

This... isn’t gonna be fast, is it?

All at once, Yasha feels dizzied, vaguely nauseous. Nebulous infinity stretches out before him like a yawning chasm, and he’s standing on the edge, trying to catch his balance before he falls in. “So... it’s not like, if you had a week or something—”

She cuts him off with a slow, grim shake of her head. The kind that doctors on medical dramas give when a patient didn’t make it.

_Oh. Oh gods. I’m— I’m gonna be fucking stuck with this thing forever, aren’t I? Shit, I’m gonna be fucking stuck **here** forever— _

Desperation tangles itself around his ribs like ivy coils, like the thick roots that bound Dog Girl to the Goshinboku’s trunk, and he can feel the traitorous groan as his bones threaten to collapse under the pressure. “Cyclops, I can’t— My family has _no fucking clue_ where I am. I _can’t_ just—fucking _wait around_ , goddammit! They’re probably— I _need_ to—”

“Until a new guardian is found, the Jewel _needs_ to be protected from the forces of evil,” Old Lady Cyclops interrupts, not unkindly.

Those mouthfuls of rice gruel he managed to swallow now feel like cement in his guts. If he stands up, he’s sure they would tear right through him. “I can’t.”

“Yasha—”

“I _can’t_ ,” he repeats, the words breaking in his throat, and she _needs to understand_. Needs to understand just how underqualified, how _un_ qualified, how _far out of his depth_ —even if he _is_ the reincarnation of this Sesshomaru person, he’s from _1996_ and he’s never seen a youkai in his _life_ until yesterday and he’s fucking _fifteen_ —

There is something slow and terrible and damning in her gaze as she reaches out with her other hand. Gnarled fingers wrap themselves around his wrist, right where his pulse beats frantic beneath his skin. The cuff of his jacket sleeve offers a flimsy fabric shield against her grip—which, despite the callouses that could easily bruise themselves against his flesh, has a gentleness about it. It is a non-invasive hold, painless and tenderness and feeling more like an apology than anything else. And yet, despite the care in it, he cannot help the way his lungs tighten. Cannot help but feel, as she pulls his hand out and forces his palm face-up, as though he’s just been shackled.

Her other hand tilts and the marble rolls excitedly out from her hand. It drops into the dip of his palm, settling among the web of his life-lines and stays there, radiating an ethereal warmth like something breathing inside his veins. A glow is cast across his palm, sickly candy-pink—paints his skin with the color of possession.

Finally, she says, “You are the only one who can.”

* * *

_“What if I just smash it? Problem solved, right?”_

_“The closest anyone has ever come to removing the Shikon-no-Tama from this world was Oniisama—and even that didn’t work, in the end.”_

Pinched between his thumb and forefinger, Yasha can’t help but feel like he’s being mocked. This supposedly-almighty gemstone doesn’t even crack when he squeezes. For all the delicacy woven into its appearance, it is surprisingly unyielding. A pinprick compared to infinity, yes, but also a nail in the coffin. Even the netherworld couldn’t keep hold of it.

_“That’s not **my** fault!”_

_“I know. But it is your burden, now.”_

Maybe the beaded necklace was meant to be a convenient holder, at some point, but it just feels like a collar around his throat. Or maybe a choke chain is more accurate, the kind used for disobedient dogs that keep clawing at the nooses of ownership around their necks. One tug in the wrong direction and they lose the ability to breathe.

_“And how the hell am **I** supposed to fucking protect this thing from **bloodthirsty monsters**?”_

_“Youkai, I’m afraid, are but the beginning. Men harboring twisted greed and a great capacity for darkness are likely to seek it out as well, hoping to make real their pretty, grasping ambitions.”_

Swallowing, he lets the Jewel slip between his fingers. Gravity has it tumbling back down, stopped from hitting the floor only by the fact that it’s threaded through the string around his neck. It ends up bumping against his chest, tapping against a spot right next to where his heart hammers hard against his ribcage. He can feel the bruises forming on the underside of his bones.

_“Fan-fucking-tastic. The hell am I supposed to **do** , then? You tell me that!”_

_“Today, I plan to meet with the elders and the village headman to discuss the matter further. In the meantime, please take the time to rest and recover.”_

He glances at the doorframe, where the woven curtain hangs heavy over the entrance. The exit. Daylight bleeds around the edges, a sharp-white halo. Just an hour ago, Old Lady Cyclops brushed the curtain aside during her departure, only for it to fall back into place as though the outside were swallowing her whole. With her gone, the hut is left uncomfortably vacuous.

_“Sure, sure. And **why** the hell should I listen to you again?”_

_“...I understand you may not trust me completely, and I am sorry for that. You were... correct last night, about my keeping my suspicions a secret. I should have been perhaps a little more forthright with you—I apologize.”_

Really, there’s nothing stopping him. Nothing impeding him from sprinting headlong into the woods if he really wanted to. From plunging into its deep and inviting darkness, falling beneath the supervision of its stolid viridian canopy. All he’d need to do is seek the Goshinboku’s proud sakaki boughs, find the clearing from which he first emerged in this century. The temptation sizzles in his marrow, and he doesn’t even know if the well _works_ like that, but if he could just _try_ —

...but.

_“Oh. Uh. Okay... Apology accepted...?”_

_“Yasha.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“ **Please** stay in the village. I know you desire to return to your home, and I understand I am asking much of you, but I fear what might happen if you leave now.”_

That look in her eye, the softness that undercut the flinty point of her gaze. At first, he thought she might have been visualizing her brother, the long-dead priest whose soul ended up trapped inside his skeleton—but she wasn’t looking past him. Not like Dog Girl did last night, searching his profile for a phantom. No, Old Lady Cyclops looked at him dead on, looked at _him_ , at _Yasha_.

_“Keh. That worried I’m gonna lose the Jewel, huh?”_

_“It is not the Jewel over which I worry.”_

_“...whatever.”_

Gah, _fine_! He’ll _stay_ in the _fucking village_ —but he’s _not_ staying in this fucking hut all day. _Once_ was bad enough.

* * *

Going into the village was a mistake.

It takes Yasha a while to notice, at first—he’s trying his best to ignore his surroundings. The village rattles with the off-kilter harmony of pounding hammers and exhausted grunts and creaking wood. Repairs have made bustling what must otherwise be a quaint scene, and none of it would have been necessary if he never came here. Everywhere he looks, there are shingles being nailed into place and beams hoisted to form wooden skeletons and debris being hauled away in great clumps. The scenery on this side of the shore is all the broken roofs and buckling walls leave him wincing. There are splintered remains of what must have been someone’s home that lay scattered around the streets. Something dangerously close to guilt twists sick and slimy in the pit of his stomach, and he has to avoid looking too closely at the construction to make it abate.

Instead, he tries to let the morning brightness soak into his face, focus on the burble of the nearby river and the crunch of the dirt path beneath his shoes. There’s no urban cacophony, no jostling crowds or car exhaust in his lungs or students racing to beat the school bell. Just a wide, pale sky that goes uninterrupted. It’s almost peaceful.

All around him, people stop and stare.

Piercing gazes itch hot against his back, possessive as a firebrand. A quick glance over his shoulder introduces him to villagers that have paused their daily routine or their construction tasks to stalk him with their eyes. He tenses, half-expecting blame and resentment to flicker in their gazes like hot coals.

What he sees instead gives him pause. Goosebumps rise on the back of his neck.

Shaking himself, he hurries away to escape their scrutiny.

But it follows him.

Suddenly, there are whispers chasing at his heels. Not particularly malicious (he knows what malicious whispers sound like), but not particularly welcome, either. Gazes that avert quickly when he tries to meet them. Clusters of people who gather around to not-so-surreptitiously peer at him from around corners. Children eye him with far less shame than the adults, their curiosity making their faces bright and open. Older men and women press their hands together in prayer, murmuring something soft with an uncomfortable amount of reverence. Some glance at him, recognition sparking across their faces, and the tendons in their necks straining from hasty double-takes.

It’s all fucking weird. He pretends, desperately, not to notice.

That all changes when an older woman—some lady well passed middle-aged, with grey streaking her dark hair and laugh lines deep around her eyes—breaks from the crowd, an arm raised to flag him down as she shouts, “Kannushi-sama!”

Something in him freezes instinctively at that, going stock-still and panicked as she skids to a stop before him. There is a brightness in her eyes, a harshness in her pants, an excited flush high in her wrinkled cheeks. Dust swirls at her feet where her eager footsteps kicked it up. She’s of petite build, with stick-thin limbs and the top of her head only coming up to his chin, yet he finds himself irrationally afraid.

“Um,” he starts.

“I’m sorry. Forgive my rudeness. It’s just—my name is Natsue and I, ahem, knew you before. In your last life.” While he blinks at her, jaw dropping—how in the fuck does she _know_?!—she goes on, in a breathless rush, “I, ah, don’t suppose you would remember, would you? You’d let myself and some of the other village accompany you out into the meadow when you’d gather herbs. Remember that time I found a five-leaf clover? You helped me dry it out and press it so it would keep. When you died the first time, I asked them to burn it with you...”

“Oh. Uh. T-That’s...”

“You used to let me braid flowers into your hair,” she continues, something wistfully gleeful in her eyes, and Yasha can only stare at her dumbly, because _what_? “Big, bright ones. They looked _so_ silly—oh, but you never complained. You were kind like that. I had _such_ a crush on you back then. My sisters and cousins and I all used to argue about which of us would argue over which of us would, ah, marry you, once we were older.”

A vein in his eye twitches. The hell... The hell is he supposed to say to _that_?!

“Oh, excuse my rambling! I just—I wanted to say that I’m glad that you’ve returned, and I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for us.” And then she _bows_ , deep and pious and motherfucking _reverent_. “So, thank you. Thank you so very much!”

He should say something to that, shouldn’t he? He should look her right in those starry, watery eyes of hers and crush that expression of fierce, glowing adoration right under his heel. Should tell her, right now, that he is absolutely _not_ the person she’s talking about, because he’s never gone into meadows to gather herbs or tolerated little kids fighting over marrying him or let anyone braid flowers into his hair—he’s never done a thing of what she’s describing right now, as she looks him in the eye while seeing a completely different person. And, perhaps more importantly, he hasn’t done anything for this village, aside from punch a few hunters in their faces and accidentally lured out a giant centipede monster.

Just as he opens his mouth to do just that, a boy close to his age breaks from the crowd and comes running over while hissing an embarrassed, “Grams!”

“Oh, that’s my grandson,” the lady, Natsue, remarks pleasantly, and waves him over. “Yuta, dear! Come meet Sesshomaru-sama’s reincarnation!”

Oh holy shit. “A-Actually—”

Whatever he was going to say ends up cut off with the grandson forcibly interjects himself between the old lady and Yasha, face bright with the panic of someone expecting to be smote for unintentional insolence. “Beg your pardon for my grandmother, kannushi-sama. She’s just—she has some very good memories of your past life, is all. She doesn’t mean anything by it, honest!”

And then he, too, bows. Yasha just stares at him, open-mouthed, and tries to process what the actual fuck is happening right now. Maybe the old miko actually _did_ roofie his food this time...

Old Lady Natsue suddenly pats her grandson’s shoulder, a sudden brightness sparking in her rheumy eyes. “Yuta, why don’t you go and grab that extra meat your father smoked?” Turning to Yasha, she explains, “My eldest son, Hiroshi, helps preserve all the meat that the hunters bring back, you see. We still have this deer heart that he smoked a few days back. Consider it thanks for, well, you know.”

This. This is a dream, right? “You—You don’t have to—”

“Nonsense! Yuta, go grab it, would you?”

“Er. Alright.” Yuta gives Yasha another deep, reverential bow before scurrying off.

In the wake of his exit, more whispers rise to the forefront of his awareness. They saturate the air in a damning buzz, words ebbing in and out of focus, and he looks around him with panic thumping in his blood as the villagers congregate around him in thick, clustering droves. One woman, turning to her presumed husband while asking _Dear, don’t we have some extra radishes back at the house?_. Some middle-aged guy, stroking his beard as he muses aloud _Come to think of it, we have some garlic in the storehouse that isn’t going anywhere in a hurry_. This man who is nearly balding elbowing a preteen boy in the ribs as he remarks _I think we could spare some fish—it’s for kannushi-sama, after all!_. A little girl tugging at a man’s pantlegs while bleating _Uncle, do you think kannushi-sama would like it if I picked him some flowers?_. Then there’s a gangly teenager who looks down at the basket in his hands with a pensive expression, murmuring _I wonder if kannushi like persimmons..._

And all the while, all the geezers continue to keep their heads bowed, their hands folded, something respectful and deeply awed in the curve of their shoulders as they dip their bodies in his direction. It reminds him of the way Gramps would bow to the shrine while asking for blessings from the nameless kami it housed, or the way Souta would send his piety to the Goshinboku every morning. With an icy sensation that is somewhere between incredulity and horror, Yasha realizes that they’re all fucking _praying_.

No. Not _just_ praying. They’re— Oh. Oh gods. Oh great gods of the heavens and all sixteen hells. They’re praying to _him_. People are _fucking_ _praying to him_.

Never in his life has Yasha had such an overpowering urge to _run_.

Turning to Old Lady Natsue, he blurts, “Look, you _really_ don’t have to do all this! I just—”

“Think nothing of it, kannushi-sama,” she interrupts, beaming, her face round and pink and it instills some primal terror in him like nothing he’s ever known. “It’s the least we can do!”

“...it’s Yasha, actually,” he says, faintly.

“Ah. Forgive me, Yasha-sama.”

What? No. _What_? Did she _seriously_ just fucking call him—

Murmurs ripple through the crowd. People going _So his name is Yasha-sama_ and _I heard Yasha-sama is the one who defeated the centipede_ and _Does that mean Yasha-sama is going to protect the village like Sesshomaru-sama did?_. It takes everything Yasha has to smother back the nigh-overwhelming urge to _scream_.

_...I’ve gotta get out of here._

* * *

There was a time when this village was an enormous thing, glittering and sprawling.

Fifty years ago, the fields seemed to stretch endless out until they met the horizon like a lover’s kiss. Huts were scattered about the valley, all large and sturdy things hewn from timber smoothed by expert hands. Atop the hill, like sun at its zenith, the shrine painted in golden tones caught the sun as an expensive ornament would, and the torii gate at the base of its mighty steps was a welcoming crimson. The river glittered whitely as it carved the town into unequal halves, which were then connected by the proud arches of wooden bridges that bravely crossed that azure width. A great marketplace sprawled out at the center, vivid as a perpetual festival, all brilliant colors and laughing children racing around stalls and traveling merchants hawking their lurid wares. Lingering at the edges like a grumpily excluded relative, the forest was no more than an insignificant smudge forgotten in the face of this unprecedented manmade prosperity.

From where she sits now, on the branch of a leafless cedar tree (it must have died sometime while she was sealed) that once-grew atop the curve of a nearby hill, Kagome feels as though she is looking at a different village.

Fifty years later, the fields are finite things, still large but nowhere close to their former glory. Huts cluster inside the town proper as though fearing venturing any further. Gone is the shrine’s golden glory, replaced by peeling paint and a torii gate that has faded to a dingy grey-red. She can count the bridges stretching across the river on one hand. Where they marketplace should be is only an unoccupied absence at the town’s center. Bolder now, the forest presses against the perimeter like a threat, a warning that it will take back what was stolen from it.

The damage wrought by Mukade-jōrō looks like open wounds. Healing wounds, but wounds all the same.

There was a time when the air hummed with a holy barrier that armored this village in divine protection. When youkai would not even have been able to tread close to this sparkling jewel of prosperity, much less scratch at the adamantine facets that make it up. Even when Kagome herself dared to venture close, slipping through the shield only by virtue of her human blood, friction-burns left her skin raw and red. Those who lived behind the barrier grew fat with their contentment, grew greedy with their stagnation, grew complacent with their safety. As the population rose, the borders spread and fear was forgotten.

But the village remembers fear, now. Their ultimate protector is dead and buried, and the one shouldering his mantle is an aged sibling whom who has but a fraction of his power. Prosperity gave way to practicality and paranoia. Borders contracted, carelessness diminished—livelihoods must still be made, but they cannot flourish as they once did.

Less of a village, less to protect. Less to lose.

Fifty years.

As she sits back, Kagome finds herself struck with a pang that feels oddly like loss. Like defeat, or failure. Which doesn’t really make sense. This village is not her home. True, she had spent an entire year watching it from the fringes—watching _over_ it—but it never welcomed her. All it was to her was... well, the longest place she’d ever linger since after her mother’s death. A focal point, if nothing else.

Now, the thing that anchored her here is gone.

Should she stay? The Shikon-no-Tama is still here, tantalizing as victory in an inevitable stalemate. Without its once-great guardian to preside over it, seizing it would be easy now. Almost unfairly easy, actually. Somehow, she doubts the reincarnation will put up half the fight his past life would.

Ugh! Just thinking about that guy makes her blood itch unpleasantly. To think that Sesshomaru would have allowed himself to be reincarnated into someone so indignant and impulsive and just plain _immature_... He’d be appalled, if he met the spoiled brat carrying his soul now.

_...but he really is gone, isn’t he? He died, and I never knew, all because he sealed me to a tree for fifty years. And now all that’s left of him is—_

“Oi! What the actual _fuck_ , Bitch?!”

_Speak of the devil._

Glancing over her shoulder, Kagome is met with the bemusing sight of the boy named “Yasha” stalking up the hill. Not empty-handed, though—he has an eclectic collection of baskets and pouches, and a few furoshiki that flare in bright, faded color against his gloomy garb. Dried fish and persimmons and potatoes, daikon radishes and garlic gloves and dried plums oh my. Sprigs of wildflowers bloom in colorful miscellanea from the pocket at his haori’s right breast, just over his heart, and even more have been tucked behind his ears, their sunny hues clashing terribly with the thunderous scowl twisting his features.

Despite the way his skeleton bends beneath the weight, he charges up to the base of the tree like a man on a mission. When he stops, he cranes his neck so far up to glare at her that she half-expects something to break. The Shikon Jewel glimmers against his shirtfront like a livid star.

“My name is Kagome,” she tells him, because really, it’s _not_ that hard to remember.

“I don’t care,” he hisses, shedding his many burdens all at once. They land in the grass with an almighty _thump_ and boy, if looks could kill then she’d probably be pinned against the Goshinboku again. “Did you fucking go around _telling_ _people_ I was that kannushi’s reincarnation?”

Her brows rise. That didn’t take long. “No.”

His indignation doesn’t waver, even as he pauses to bat the flowers out from behind his ears. “So it was the hag, then!”

Swinging her legs around, Kagome turns to face him fully. “ _Actually_ —do you remember, last night, when you were telling Auntie Kaede that you didn’t need to listen to her because you were the reincarnation of her older brother?”

In slow motion, his face transitions from disbelieving fury to thoughtful remembrance to dismayed realization to grimacing defeat. And it is just so absolutely _weird_ , seeing Sesshomaru’s face go through such a dizzying array of emotions.

“Well, the villagers heard that. And they _gossip_.”

Looking like he wants to both punch something and kick himself, Yasha slumps to the ground, leaning against the trunk for support in a boneless, undignified manner that Sesshomaru would never stoop to. Kagome watches as he claps his hands over his forehead, a frustrated groan vainly half-muffled into his wrists.

Curiously, she glances over to the discarded foodstuff. Most looks delectably fresh, if not preserved with the intension of lasting long periods, and the sheer amount borders on excessive. “What is all that, anyway?” she asks, though she thinks she already knows.

“ _Offerings_ ,” comes the groaned answer.

“So they like you, then.”

“They like me _today_!” he scoffs, dropping his hand into his lap to reveal an expression of dismay so intense it almost strikes her as comical, the whites of his eyes flashing up at her with something vaguely horrified. “ _Yesterday_ , they thought I was a yaksha and threatened to kill me. Now, they’re fucking _worshipping_ me! Do you have any idea how _creepy_ that is? All the old geezers were thanking the gods for bringing back ‘the great Sesshomaru-sama’! Dunno _what_ stopped me from clockin’ ‘em all up the side of the head... One guy even burst into tears when he fucking _shook my hand_! Like, what the _actual_ shit?”

Despite herself, a smile cracks across Kagome’s face. “They’re probably hoping to buy your protection.”

“My _what_.”

“Well, you’re Sesshomaru’s reincarnation, right?” His response is to level her with the same expression of flat, half-lidded annoyance that used to adorn Sesshomaru’s features at least daily. She’ll take that as an affirmation. “He was this village’s guardian. Even if there’s no one still alive who remembers him, they must have at least heard the stories. They’re probably hoping you’ll take up his mantle now.”

 _Thunk_. She looks down to see the back of Yasha’s skull pressed flat against the trunk, and one hand half-tangled in his bangs. “Protect the Jewel, protect the village—anything _else_ I gotta do while I’m here?”

There’s not really much she can think to say to that, so she just shrugs. “At least you’re important.”

“Important,” he repeats, with a bitter curl around the word. “Fuck that. I’d rather be back _home_. At least then people wouldn’t be _praying_ at me and calling me ‘-sama’ and giving me—smoked _deer hearts_ and shit.”

Blinking, her gaze drifts over to the piles upon piles of discarded offerings. Discarded, because he doesn’t want them. “Someone gave you a smoked deer heart?”

Something in her voice must give her away, because suspicion gathers on his face, then. “...among other things. Why?”

“Well...” Her stomach cramps painfully around the hollowness. “I _have_ heard many good things about deer hearts.”

“Are. Are you serious?” His face is blank with something vaguely resembling disgust.

If she were any less used to disgusted looks, perhaps she would be offended. But she likes to think that she’s pretty much immune to other people’s judgement at this point, so she just shrugs and replies, “Well, I haven’t eaten anything in _fifty years_...”

For a long, long moment, he does nothing more than stare at her flatly. There’s a hint of Sesshomaru in the slight narrowness of his eyes and the firm, pursed line of his mouth. Not enough to hurt, but just enough to remind. Just enough to make her think that he’s going to refuse.

But then, suddenly, he rises to his feet, a wordless sigh voicing enough exasperation that he almost doesn’t need to hunch his shoulders the way he does. Without any smartass response or cursing about it, he stalks over to the pile and drops to his knees before it like a sinner before an altar. With his head bowed, she can see nothing of him but the deep concentration wrought into the curve of his spine and the sharp peaks of his shoulder blades that lift beneath his haori. Then, almost as abruptly as he dove down, he emerges again.

Something soars casually through the air. She catches it with inhuman reflexes. Layers of white cloth wound around something a little larger than her hand. Peeling it back rewards her with dark meat and a rich, bloody scent that makes her mouth water instinctively.

“Go nuts,” he says, settling back into the fork of the tree roots. “At least this way, we’re even and I don’t owe you shit.”

Perhaps she should be concerned with that, should make some comment about the value of a saved life versus sated hunger—but as her fangs sink deep into the meat, the world disappears in a heady rush of flavor. It tastes like the invitation of an autumn bonfire, all smoky air and crisp heat and crackling embers drifting up against a sullen night sky. It’s the best thing she’s ever tasted since her mother’s cooking.

She can feel Yasha staring at her for a few seconds—then his gaze averts, and she hears him muttering something about carnivores that she chooses to ignore.

After that, he doesn’t move to bother her or make any more disparaging comments, which allows her to eat in relative peace. It’s been far too long since she’s eaten something she didn’t have to kill herself or forage out in the woods. She plans to savor every precious last mouthful.

Only once she’s finished her meal does it strike her just how quiet he’s been the whole time, and that doesn’t seem like normal behavior for him. All she knows of him thus far is his stubbornness, his temper, his inability to shut up or vocalize anything without threading at least two curse words in. And after all, he clearly came here with the express purpose of chewing her out—even though the blame fell squarely on _his_ shoulders, and the fact that he never considered this perhaps means she should tack “juvenile arrogance” onto the short-but-growing list of things she knows about the man who inherited Sesshomaru’s soul. For him to be as quiet as this, without trying to pick a fight or fling derogatory comments just doesn’t seem very plausible.

_Don’t tell me he packed up and left without saying anything. ...not that he really has any **reason** to say anything, but it’s the principle, y’know? He could at least have the courtesy to— Oh, never mind. He didn’t leave after all._

Not only that, but he’s even straightened in place, his spine no longer pressed against the tree in a boneless slouch. His attention towards her has been abandoned in favor of turning the Shikon-no-Tama over in his hand, smoothing his finger across the glassy surface with an almost experimental curiosity. Its glow sends starry pink pinpricks dancing in the dark of his eyes.

Only his profile is visible to her, the curve of his cheek, the slope of his nose, the slant of his brow. But there is a calm, thoughtful expression that sculps his features.

And she stares.

All he’s done since they met is flash though emotion after emotion after emotion at a dizzying speed, and she began to suspect that he didn’t know _how_ to keep his thoughts off his face. But here he is, doing the exact opposite—sitting there with a startling stillness, a serenity that shakes her.

Here he is, shedding the one thing that drew a thick, stark line between past and present. Suddenly, the phantom emerges from behind the cage of his bones, raises its head to stare a challenge at her with glassy, fathomless eyes. It twines itself around the firm set of his shoulders, in the casual lift of his chin, in the curl of his lashes from half-mast eyelids, in the silken whisper of obsidian hair across his forehead. It is alive in how breath makes the flesh of his throat rise and fall to a slow, hypnotic rhythm. Its heartbeat pulses within the crisp lines of his body, as though an inherent pride were radiating out from his very marrow. If she doesn’t stop herself, she can almost picture him kneeling at the shore of a lazy brook to green his fingertips with herbs, sunlight tracing gauzy gold across the planes of his cheekbones and shadow rippling across the folds in his clothes.

Clothes that are funeral attire black rather than a saint’s sinless white. A face that is sun-kissed olive instead of fair from so much time spent in the shrine. Liquid liquid-midnight hair pulled into a high, thick tail, not free-flowing. But... the differences are suddenly so arbitrary. Even when a soul wraps itself in a different flesh, sheds an old skin for a new, it is still the same soul simply clothed in a different garment.

In the woodlands of fifty years past, she perches in the branches of a different tree, observing a different figure sitting cross-legged within the fork of different roots with the Shikon-no-Tama being studied absently by different eyes. He, too, had an intensity about him that was always off-putting—a sharpness that could cut, if she wasn’t careful. But then, in such a tranquil state, he softened into something almost approachable. Something almost not-deadly, something almost-safe.

Dark eyes flash to their periphery. Abruptly, Yasha turns to face her, a skeptical pinch in his brows.

There is an audible _thunk_ as fifty years fall back into place.

Hastily, Kagome looks away, pretending that her ears aren’t burning and she wasn’t searching for a ghost among the living. “If you keep frowning like that, your face is going to freeze that way.”

He actually _wasn’t_ frowning before, but he does at that. “Feh,” he sniffs, turning away.

From the caution of her periphery, she catches him flicking the Jewel from his fingers, the way one might discard an annoyance. It doesn’t get far, the beaded chain binding it firm into place and sending it swinging back. When it just lands against his chest, bright against the black of his clothes, he scowls at it as though grievously offended.

Hm... “Not a fan of being the Jewel’s protector, are you?”

With a scoff, he plucks the chain between his fingers, right above where the Jewel sits. It is left to dangle in the air from what little slack he affords as he regards it with narrowed eyes. “Let’s put it this way: I’m seriously considering just swallowing this thing and putting it back where it came from.”

“I’m sure all the youkai coming after the Jewel will be _thrilled_ at the accompanying appetizer,” she replies, dryly.

“Keh. I think I’d just give ‘em indigestion.”

Was. Was that her imagination, or did she actually just catch an inflection of _humor_ in his tone? Did he actually—

Like, yeah, Sesshomaru had the capacity for dry, deadpan delivery to the occasional joke, but he didn’t even dare to let it show until she’d known him for at least half a year. And here Yasha is, letting such a thing show when he hardly even knows her.

There isn’t much time to process it, though, because he shifts to peer up at her through his bangs. There’s something almost resigned swimming in his gaze, oddly close to defeat. “This thing really is impossible to get rid of, isn’t it?”

“It’s an all-powerful wish-granting jewel,” she points out, arching a brow. “Most people wouldn’t _want_ to ‘get rid’ of it.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he mutters halfheartedly, turning away again.

“ _Although_ —you could always give it to me, if you _really_ don’t want it.” It’s probably pointless, because kannushi don’t make it a habit of trusting anything a youkai says, but she has to at least _try_ the nonviolent option.

Annoyance makes itself known in a sigh, and he allows the chain and Jewel to both fall back against his chest with a beaded rattle. “You’re still on about that?”

“The way I see it, it’s a win-win.”

“Why, though?”

“...because you don’t want it, and I do.” C’mon, seriously? He can’t be _that_ thick...

At least he understood the slight to his intelligence, because he bolts sharply upright, flashing her a burning glare the color of onyx. “I _meant_ ,” he snaps, saying _meant_ the way one might say _bitch_ , “why the hell do you want it at all?”

“Eh?” There’s. There’s no _way_ he just asked her that. Right? Sesshomaru _never_ cared about her motives. ...even _after_ —

“Well,” he begins, irritable, as though he shouldn’t have to explain this and her perfectly reasonable confusion were anything but, “when the centipede ate it, she turned into a fucking monster, so. Why are you tryna turn yourself into a monster?”

That probably wasn’t meant to hang in the air as ominously as it did, or have a sudden chill descending upon her veins, but the _phrasing_... She shakes it away, ignoring the goosebumps trying to prickle their way up the path of her spine.

Idiot. What does _he_ know about her motivations anyway? Just because _some_ youkai have malicious intentions that taint the Jewel doesn’t mean _all_ youkai, regardless of whether their reasons are rooted in vice or virtue, will birth corruption. Yes, most youkai have their hearts closed tight to things that humans value, but exceptions _always_ exist. Her very existence _proves_ that. And surely, the Jewel wouldn’t darken from _her_ wish, with her human mother and her half-human blood and—

_“Any wish that benefits you, even remotely, will ultimately corrupt the Shikon Jewel, no matter how selfless you believe your intentions_ _.” A pause, pensive thoughts swirling deep in the abyss of those dark eyes. “Hn. But perhaps there **is** a way...”_

“It. It doesn’t... _work_ that way.”

His brow crumples at that, expression morphing to get caught between confusion and something almost resembling concern. “You sure?”

Ignoring the traitorous quaver in her chest, she shoves the memory from her mind. Locks it into some far corner where all once-lovely things go to die after their corruption has been exposed, the beautiful gilding peeled away to reveal a rotten core. It’s all just lies and deceit and false promises. There’s no point in getting torn up over it.

“No,” she retorts, what was meant to be a chastisement coming out dripping with condescension, “I’m basing this all on a _hunch_.”

Yasha bristles with offense beneath the jab. She’s starting to hate how easy it is to rile up, how little discipline he has over his temper. “Oi! Quit talkin’ to me like I’m an _idiot_. I just figured it’d be a fucking waste if it melted your face, alright?”

Okay, is she going nuts here, or was that _almost_ a compliment? “...thank you?”

“So?” he prompts, still annoyed.

...might as well. “So. I’m hanyou.”

The frown does not waver. “That tells me squat. The hell does that even _mean_?”

He— _What_?

“You don’t _know_?” He’s messing with her. He has to be. He’s a kannushi, right? He can’t _not_ _know_.

But he bristles again. The glare he pins her with has the force of a thunderstorm behind it, and it still amazes her how his _entire face_ changes with every emotion. “Would I be fucking asking if I _knew_?” he snaps like a crack of lightning against a wind-battered sky. “ _Seriously_ —quit treatin’ me like I’m an idiot! _Goddamn_. Are you _always_ this condescending, or are you just being a bitch to me specifically?”

Kagome decides to ignore that, because he really doesn’t have any room to judge. It’s not as though _he’s_ been a paragon of friendliness himself (and his being Sesshomaru’s reincarnation, she doubts that will change anytime soon).

Regardless, his confusion looks genuine enough. He really is clueless.

 _Then again, this is the guy tried to negotiate with something trying to **literally eat him**..._ Okay. Maybe she shouldn’t be _too_ shocked.

“It means one of my parents was human, and the other was youkai. _Han_.” With one hand, she traces out the kanji for “half”, careful to move slow enough that he can visualize it. “ _Yō_.” With the other hand, she mimes the beginning kanji in the word “youkai”, which alone means something like “bewitching” or “calamity”. “Get it?”

Belatedly, it occurs to her that he might not understand. Up until now, she was operating under the assumption that he received training at a shrine or temple. But now he doesn’t even know what a hanyou is—so maybe she thought wrong. And unless his family had enough wealth under its belt to afford him a tutor and a decent education, he likely doesn’t even know how to write, much less read.

To her surprise, though, comprehension sparks across his face. “ _Oh_. So it’s— _oh_ , okay.”

She blinks dumbly. _Huh. Does that mean he’s from a noble family or something, then? A scholar’s relative? He certainly doesn’t **talk** like one. But maybe it would explain the spoiled attitude..._

While she finds solace with that conclusion, Yasha pauses to mull this over. After a moment, he leans back against the trunk, head pillowed in the fold of his arms, still wearing that thoughtful expression as he peers up at her with mild fascination. “That’s... pretty cool, actually.”

A sudden _thump_ of her heartbeat in her ears that knocks the present to the fringes. In her mind’s eye, disdain is painted in thick, poisonous brushstrokes across the faces of humans and youkai alike. Her mother’s relatives have burning acid bubbling behind pretty white smiles, all toxic susurrations that echo in the halls in a way that must be intentional. Her only family on her father’s side has eyes like winter distilled into gold, turning away with a snap of silver-white hair so sharp it could only be rejection.

“... _cool_?”

His brow crumples in confusion. “Or? I guess... not?”

Pursing her lips, Kagome searches the angles of his face. As much as she would _like_ to believe he isn’t trying to pull something, she knows better. Sesshomaru never could overlook her youkai blood and she doubts his reincarnation would be any different.

“Okay, you’re lookin’ at me like I’m nuts,” he says aloud, a line forming between the pinch of his brows, “so I’m gonna go ahead and assume it’s _not_ a ‘born with awesome superpowers’ situation, then.”

The utter ridiculousness in those words leaves her brow twitching. “Are you making fun of me?”

Now he blinks. “What? No. What?”

“Then how stupid _are_ you?”

As he draws himself into a kneeling position, one that allows him to crane his neck up at her and pin her with narrowed eyes, the chain swings around his throat. The Jewel sways in the open air, caught between leaning back into him and apparent freedom. “The hell crawled up _your_ ass? I was just—”

“You can’t just say something like _that_ and expect me to take you seriously,” she interrupts, the words like broken flint in her mouth. It is a miracle she doesn’t slice her tongue open on them.

Fierce emotion surfaces on his features, like a storm sweeping suddenly over a moments-ago-peaceful sky. Between the intensity of it and the way his (familiar-but-not) face twists beneath the influence, she can _almost_ believe he’s being genuine. He is much more overt than his predecessor, wears his heart beating proud on his sleeve than hidden behind a stoic exterior and a face that rarely even twitches, much less smiles. But she knows better than to leap headfirst into the storm, because fifty years ago, an arrow seared through her chest like the impact of a lightning bolt. Storms always leave you wind-battered and broken in the end.

Or maybe she’s making unnecessary comparisons, because the man who lured her in before had a different body and a different name. Maybe he hasn’t given her any reason to trust him, but he also hasn’t given her any reason to _dis_ trust him. Maybe his sentiments are genuine—and the implications just haven’t occurred to him because he’s actually _that stupid_.

Presently, Yasha lets out a sound that is half growl, half scoff, and all frustration. “This is bullshit. I just asked a _fucking_ _question_.”

Fine. Maybe she _is_ in the wrong, but—but _goddammit_. Why does he have to be such an _idiot_? “Why do you even _care_?”

“I _don’t_ , really!” Again, the anger flares up, easily as sucking in a breath. “Just figured talkin’ to _you_ was better than goin’ back to a village full of idiots.”

Indignation throbs in her temples. She presses her palms against the branch’s rough bark to steady herself. “Oh, so I’m just _entertainment_ , then.”

“I never said that!” he spits in protest.

“But you _meant_ it,” she retorts harshly.

Rather than deny it, he just clenches his jaw shut with an audible _click_. His glare spears into her with a searing intensity, one that would maim her bloodily if glares had that power. It brings to mind a different man with an entirely different temperament. Even slow to outright anger, Sesshomaru delivered a glare the same way he delivered an arrow—all cutting grace and deadly accuracy—and it seems his reincarnation has at least inherited some fraction of that lethal skill.

“You are fucking _impossible_!” Yasha hisses at her, and his glare is more sheer power than sharp focus but it burns all the same. “All you’ve been doing since I met you is _lecture_ me. The hell did I ever do to you?”

“ _You’re_ the one asking stupid questions.” Questions that Sesshomaru never had the decency to ask. Questions that just waste time, because doesn’t he realize she could have knocked him out and made off with the Jewel by now?

“ _You’re_ the one not giving me a straight fucking _answer_!” he shouts back, his voice rough in a way Sesshomaru’s never was.

“You want a straight answer?” Kagome does not need to look to know that her claws have punctured bark. She can feel the pressure behind it, the tension in the bones of her fingers as they push against an equally unyielding force. Perhaps this is how the arrow felt when it punctured her heart. “I want to the Jewel so I can become a full youkai. _Obviously_.”

“Obvi— _What_ is obvious about that?!”

“Well what _else_ did you think I wanted the Jewel for?!”

“Bitch, why the fuck do you think I _asked_?!” From this angle, the Jewel glows tantalizingly from just under the curved angle of his chin. If she wanted to, she could drop from the branches and rip it free—her claws might accidentally catch on and cut open his throat.

“What? Did you think I’d want to become something _else_?” Without her even noticing, a vice-grip has settled around her ribs. The pressure is a slow and aching thing, one that leaves her bones creaking a warning before they collapse around her heart and lungs and shred her from the inside out. “A _human_ , maybe?”

The words rip her open on the way out. Like tearing free a weapon that has spent too long buried inside your flesh, too long acquainted with your body. Freeing yourself from it is a welcome act, the pain that scorches through your nerves almost a relief in its own way—but blood still gushes out from the open cavity, and you are in no less danger of losing your life to the blood loss or infection or gangrene.

Because fifty years ago, long, slender fingers weave their way through hers, callouses meeting callouses in an act of unspoken reassurance. Moonlight filtering through the canopy, silvery shadows casting monochrome tessellations over his cheekbones. There is a leaf caught in the ebony spool of glossy hair, a pale spot just behind the curl of his ear. Midnight eyes trap her reflection, smoky and half-lidded and long, swooping lashes. A (false) promise paints the space where their breaths collide, and she tastes hope.

Fifty years ago, she is ready to fling herself headlong into eternity. Fifty years ago, there is a liar with an arrow nocked in his bow. Fifty years ago—

“ _Maybe_? I don’t fucking _know_ your life!”

In the present, Yasha is throwing his arms up in exasperation. And the distance between them yawns with empty space.

Empty space that suddenly feels like an exercise in dishonesty. Like some lie woven up in bright daylight and silence waiting to be filled—because there are a thousand painful things trapped inside her body that will never cut as deeply as they should, now. She is feeding an illusion by sitting suspended over the ground as though afraid to touch it, her back to a village that has shrunken to a fraction of its size when she wasn’t looking, every breath filled with the scent of a ghost given flesh.

Said ghost given flesh stands directly underneath her, his glare a firebrand against her face and the Jewel burning pale pink against his chest like the naivety of your first love.

Fabric rustles against her legs as she draws them in, plants her heels firm against the bark. Wind flashes through her ears and combs at her hair when she pushes off. Suddenly, her feet are planted firm in the grass, her neck twinging from looking up at him rather than looking down.

“I’m not becoming human,” she declares, and maybe that doesn’t mean anything to him, but it does to her. It’s a rejection of what _he_ tricked her into wanting and it grounds her, leaves triumph singing in the back of her throat.

Yasha’s jaw twitches, his eyes narrowing into something almost accusatory. Even though he stands a head taller than her, she still doesn’t feel the height difference the way she knows she should. “Why? You got something _against_ being human?”

“Of course not. Don’t be stupid.”

“Keh! Can’t go two seconds without treating me like a fucking moron, can you?”

Her only response is a contemptuous snort. All she’s doing is treating him the way he’s acted up until now—and if she treats him like a moron, then that’s on him, not her.

“What’s the big deal about being a youkai?” The words are spat out with the fever of a war declaration. “Can’t be _that_ great.”

This was a mistake, she realizes now. An impulsive, stupid mistake. From afar, the similarities were a fuzzy thing, and the silhouettes almost-blurred in a way that made the past press obtusely into her periphery. Up close, the past and present overlap painfully, and the differences are just as stark as the similarities. 

“You really wanna know?” she asks, dark with a challenge.

“Yeah, I really fucking _do_.” His face is too close.

She steps forward, until she is pressing against the fringes of his personal space. “Really?”

He responds by stepping forward as well, until their noses are almost-touching and his eyes are large enough to drown. “ _Really_.”

Yet another difference. Sesshomaru was never this easy to rile up, and never would have let it show quite so openly. Any anger that would darken his gaze was guarded carefully, shuttered behind a stoic visage, and silently funded cold, calculative shows of vengeance. But Yasha bursts into sparks at the slightest provocation, flares at a single misplaced word—and it irks her, how _easy_ it is.

“I want to be like my father.” Saying it out loud, it sounds dewy with infantile sentiment, sounds soft and wispy the way clouds look before they darken with thunder and rain. Perhaps because the dream sparked in her heart when she was a child— _really_ a child, before her mother died and the real world hollowed out her faith in all that is good—and she locked it up behind her ribs where nothing and no one could taint it with cynicism. This is the first time that she has dared to unearth that desire, to claw it out from its hiding place and present it to someone and let it become the subject of their careless scrutiny. “He wasn’t like other youkai, didn’t look down on humans or consider them to be lesser creatures. You probably haven’t heard of the Inu-no-Taisho this far out in the East, but out in the West, he was a _living legend_. He was so powerful that there was no reason for him to concern himself with the petty affairs of creatures so much weaker than him. But he did. Not just that, he _protected_ them.”

There’s a pinch in Yasha’s brows now, confusion cutting through the dark, wrathful haze in his eyes. Something like victory swells against her sternum at that sight—it means that the words are not just hanging stagnant in the air, that they are being drawn into his mind and absorbed into his comprehension and picked apart by his curiosity. It’s more courtesy than Sesshomaru ever offered. For all the time that _he_ spent meticulously gaining her trust, wrapping her around his delicate finger with pretty words and murmured fantasies and almost-futures, he never once asked her about her reasons. Never gave a damn.

Neither does Yasha, probably. He’s openly admitted to only using this conversation as an excuse to escape the village. This is just a distraction for him, and he could likely care less about what she says so long as she gives him a reason to keep from stalking back into the streets singing his praises (oh, how _terrible_ that must be, to be admired and loved so effortlessly).

Maybe he doesn’t care, but _she_ cares, goddammit. _She_ cares.

“He died doing just that,” she goes on, pouring everything she has into those words, because _she cares_ , “or so I heard. I was too young to remember. Everything I know about him comes from the stories my mother told me. I don’t even know how true they are, how much is fact and how much is embellishment. But even if they were all make-believe, they were inspiring all the same. I don’t just want to be a full youkai, I want to be the kind of youkai like _he_ was.”

Empty space yawns between them where Yasha has drawn back, blinking three times in rapid succession. He wears the look of someone seeing something for the first time, doing a rapid re-evaluation of everything they think they know. And perhaps she would have noticed that—but with the distance, the differences reassert themselves. Dark clothes and pulled-back hair and a darker complexion and a younger face. Just enough to be a relief and a disappointment all in one.

Her mouth twists into a sardonic smile. What is she even doing? Sesshomaru is _never_ going to hear this. “I know what you’re thinking. ‘What gives you the right to decide that? How dare you presume to make decisions on humanity’s behalf!’ Well I’m _sorry_ I didn’t consult all of humanity first, but it’s pretty evident that you— Gods above, are you even _listening_?”

At some point while she was talking, his attention drifted away from her in favor of the Shikon-no-Tama and its sugar-sweet glow. One hand has it captured by the fingertips, thought it is only large enough to fit the press of his thumb and three other fingers, leaving his pinky to curl crookedly in empty air. The other hand grips at the beads where they sit against the back of his neck, tugging it away from his skin as though he can no longer stand the contact. She is left to fume at his audacity—because here she is, baring her soul, and he’s just fiddling around with the damn necklace!

Wait, scratch that. _Not_ fiddling with it. He pulls the chain high over his head, ducking out of it with great care to avoid any of the beads catching on his hair. Dumbly, she realizes that he’s taking it off.

Before she can voice her confusion, he reaches out to catch her wrist in one hand. It shouldn’t surprise her that his hands are different than Sesshomaru’s were, but it does anyway—the bluntness in his fingers, the uneven ridges that make up his nails, the smoothness in places where years of archery would grow callouses. But even then, his palm is warm against the delicate skin that separates her pulse from his, and though it is a capture of some kind, she does not feel trapped by his grip.

“What are you—” she starts, but doesn’t get very far as he coaxes her hand out, palm facing up. The next thing she knows, his other hand is clasped firmly over his. She stares blankly at the overlay of hands, the clash of sundrenched olive and parchment paleness, marveling. Compared to him, she is the one who looks like a ghost.

Between their palms, she can feel something small and round and glassy-smooth. Warmth that glides against her skin, his fingertips kissing the bone of her wrists. A pulse trapped between their hands.

“Here.”

And when his hands vanish, the Shikon-no-Tama is cupped delicately in the dip of her palm.

Time stutters, the space that separates her pulse growing longer and longer until the stretches of silence begin to ache. Those spaces are filled with the slow undulation of power that beats out from the crystal sphere, as though it itself were a living thing, a heartbeat that happened to fall from heaven and land haphazardly in her hand.

She wonders if it always felt like this, a distillation of stardust and distant dreams and hopes that should never be realized. Back then, when she first laid eyes on the Jewel, there had been no time to admire it before carelessly snatching it from its pedestal. All she knew then was the beads clattering against her knuckles and the heat on her face as she soared over the burning town. She didn’t even have the energy or care to absorb the shimmering pink glow that washes over her skin now, because back then it was smothered beneath her fist and her triumph and the driving anger that left her vision too dark to see straight.

Up close, it has the beauty of a mirage. Too bright and too wondrous to be anything real, an illusion should waver the longer she looks at it. Only—it doesn’t. It doesn’t vanish, doesn’t evaporate away into a trickle of starlight. It remains real and solid and warm against her hand in a way that dreams only wish they could.

“Why,” she manages, and gets no further. Is this really happening? It can’t be. No way.

Only the profile of Yasha’s face answers her. There is something rigid in the tight fold of his arms over his chest, in the way shoulders are half-risen until the curve threatens to eclipse his jaw from view. His expression is oddly pinched, all creased brows and squinted eyes and crooked frown. Strangely, though, she is struck with an impression that it’s more nerves than aggression.

“The hag said I gotta protect it from evil.” The words come out snappish and too sharp, but his tone doesn’t strike her as intentionally hurtful. “And since you aren’t evil, I don’t gotta worry about you, right?”

Kagome can only stare at him uncomprehendingly, because he can’t mean what she _thinks_ he means. No guardian of the Shikon Jewel would relinquish it so easily. Especially not to someone who the last guardian deemed unworthy and cut down mercilessly to prevent her fingerprints from tarnishing such a sacred treasure.

Perhaps she stares too long, because he shifts uncomfortably, and his cheek darkens with a nervous flush. Grumbling, he adds, “I’d probably make a shitty guardian anyways. Might as well give it to someone who’ll put it to good use.”

_Someone who will put it to good use._

That echoes in her ears, hollow and ringing. In her mind’s eye, the end of Sesshomaru’s arrow is trained over her heart. He hadn’t cared about whether the Jewel would be put to good use or not. All he cared was that it never left his protection, righteous intentions or no.

“...are you serious?”

Yasha scratches sheepishly at the back of his neck, still scowling into the distance. “Keh. Win-win, right?”

Something clenches tight in her sternum, a nervous pressure. The Jewel casts her palm in the color of its pale glow. It shouldn’t even be here. Sesshomaru died with it, took it with him to the other world. He took the Jewel and his devotion to it to his grave.

Perhaps that devotion was his most admirable trait. It was a molten-iron wellspring tucked behind his ribs that spilled out from his bones and cooled over his skin like impenetrable armor. Even if you _did_ chip away at that silver shell—cracks the steel surface and bypass the porcelain web of his bones—you still had to tread a river of magma before reaching his heart. And that heart was forged in duty’s furnace, all petty passions and human sympathies hammered out of him until there was only room for his sister and his binding obligation to the Jewel’s safety and nothing else. She herself had been unable to wedge herself into that space, rejected fiercely for the fidelity that bound him so.

If it were him standing here, having indulged her little vent, his molten-steel devotion wouldn’t be soothed in the slightest. If anything, he might just mock her for her presumptive optimism. Might call her selfish, for believing her own desires held any more importance than the fate of Japan as a whole. _There is a **reason** I protect this Jewel, hanyou_, he would say, eyes the color of cast-iron as he glared down at her.

But Yasha is doing none of that. His gaze is somewhere between indignation and expectant, like he is infuriated by his own nerves. There is a challenge there, yes—but none of the condescension, none of the confrontation. It is all smoke and smelting-steam and an impatient _What is taking you so long?_. Nothing more.

“You...”

Looking at him now, Kagome feels stupid for finding similarities. He is not unflinching steel, not a smooth, polished surface crafted by careful hands. The fire in him is not masterfully contained within a polished furnace—it spills out carelessly from broken seams in the framework. Metal warps and buckles and blackens beneath its reckless heat.

Reckless. Sesshomaru would _never_ be so reckless. Would never have taken such a gamble on her word alone. Sesshomaru would prioritize the Jewel’s protection.

But Yasha—

“...are _unbelievable_!”

—is practically _throwing it away_.

Her vision bursts into scarlet bruises at that thought. Scarlet like blood, scarlet like devotion, scarlet like everything that the man she once knew ever stood for. She is seized, suddenly, by the impulse to hit something. To feel something break beneath her hands, because how _dare_ he. How dare—

If he’s just going to _hand over the Jewel_ , as though it were something so _unimportant_ , as though someone didn’t _die to protect it_ , then she—

 _Crack_. The air grows thick and dusty-sweet with the scent of tree sap.

The Shikon-no-Tama is trapped in the tree trunk. Half-embedded in the wood as though trying to melt into the tree itself, its light just as starry-bright and optimistic as always. Chain hanging limply from an angle, the wedge-shaped beads pale as bone against the splintered bark. Spiderwebbing fissures bloom from the point of impact. A viscous wellspring of green-amber sap blooms along the cracks. Such a wound will likely leave the tree open to infection, to disease, to death—but she can’t even care.

“Irresponsible—” She’s panting, a half-dozen broken thoughts in her mouth, and her fists are so tight she can feel her claws cutting skin. “Reckless—Immature—Sesshomaru would _never_ —”

Very slowly, Yasha rises up from his crouched position. The whites of his eyes are showing, his scent sharpened by alarm. With a slackened jaw, he looks first at the Jewel, then at her, then at the Jewel again. “What the fuck,” he mutters.

But she can hardly hear him over the blood beating in her ears. “Is this a _joke_ to you? You don’t just _hand over_ the Shikon-no-Tama! And _especially_ not someone you barely know!”

“Are you trying to fucking _kill_ me?!” he explodes right back.

“ _What_?”

He points sharply at the crater in the tree, eyes burning like hot steel not-yet tempered by a blacksmith’s hammer. “That could have taken my _head off_ , you fucking bitch!”

Fury _pounds_ through her veins until she can hardly see straight. “Are you even _listening_ to me?!”

“Oh I’m _listening_ ,” he snaps back, suddenly harsh as rain battering windowpanes. “You’re going fucking ballistic because I tried to be _nice_.”

“ _No_. I’m going ‘ballistic’ because you’re supposed to protect the Jewel and you’re giving it away to someone you’ve known for _less than a day_! And what, because I told you a sob story? _Idiot_!” Because even after a year and a half, Sesshomaru _still_ conspired to take her life—something he plotted since the very moment she made the mistake of meeting him. Even if he _had_ heard her reasons, he never would have yielded to them. If there was anything good to be said about him, it was that he was a man of unshakeable resolve, and if Yasha really _is_ his reincarnation, then it should take so much _more_ than a few pretty words to make him abandon his responsibility. “I could have been _lying_! Maybe my real intentions were to completely annihilate this village and every other village in the province, and you—in your _infinite stupidity_ —just handed over an all-powerful, wish-granting jewel that would have let me do all that and _more_. All those deaths would be on _your_ head! Did you even _think_ about that? Did you even consider that what you’re doing might just be monumentally _stupid_?! You don’t just _casually_ give away something _that powerful_! _Moron_!”

A vein in his temple twitches to a visibly erratic beat. “Well _congrats_! Offer’s off the fucking table!”

“It should never have been _on_ the table in the _first place_!” she snarls back, because he’s _missing the point_. He is supposed to the same soul given a different shape, is supposed to be cold and unyielding steel—not overheated metal, burning to the touch but still painfully malleable and _far_ too pliant for his own good. “What is _wrong_ with you?!”

“I was _trying_ to be a _decent person_!” And he spits the word “decent person” out with something almost like disdain.

Decent— Is he _serious_?! “You were _trying_ to get out of your job!”

Hesitation—brief, fleeting, telling. A tightening in his scowl. His glare is a cutting, bladed thing that darts off to the side. “I wasn’t—”

“You _were_ ,” Kagome interrupts sharply, because there is _no excuse_. Not when his duty should be _everything_ to him.

“ _Fuck_ you!” The moment Yasha refocuses his glare onto her, the height difference hits in a way it never did before. Suddenly she feels fragile in a way she never should, all paper-thin skin and petite bones and a still-throbbing wound where the arrow speared her heart. “I don’t _need_ this shit! I don’t even want to fucking _be_ here!”

“And _I_ didn’t want to be pinned to a tree for fifty years, but it still _happened_!” Because Sesshomaru saw her as a threat and he cut her down and—

And that’s it, really. Nothing else. Just... doing his job.

Because the bottom line is that he just didn’t _care_. She was just another threat that needed to be exterminated and he had a responsibility that defined every breath of his being. Because he had a duty that meant _everything_ and she meant _nothing_.

And Yasha _needs_ to understand that, the sheer importance the Jewel should have to him. It should come before _all_ else. Even her. _Especially_ her. Otherwise—

_Otherwise why did I end up sleeping fifty years of my life away?_

“So you need to _shut up_ and take some _goddamn responsibility_ , whether you like it or _not_!”

“ _Listen_ you—”

“No, _you_ listen!” she explodes, because she did _not_ spend half a century stuck in a tree just for Sesshomaru to reincarnate and change his mind and decide that the Shikon-no-Tama isn’t _worth it_ anymore. “All I care about is getting the Shikon Jewel and becoming a full youkai, but that is _not_ going to happen because you, the utter _moron_ that you are, decided that you just can’t be bothered to look after it and are using me as a convenient way to weasel out of your job!”

“For the _last_ time, I _wasn’t_ —”

“No, it’s going to _happen_ because I _took_ it from you.” He flinches back when her pointer finger is thrust unceremoniously into his face—the lethal end of her claw, painted crimson from her own blood, hovers just a breath’s distance away from the tip of his nose. All it would take is a fraction of a motion to puncture skin and mix their blood together on the point of her nail. “Because I _fought_ you for it—because I _won_. It’s going to be because you tried your damn hardest to protect the Jewel and, despite that, I still _beat_ you. And _that_ is the way things are going to play out. _Understand_?”

Something flickers in his gaze, then. A waver in the intensity there, his shoulders drawing up as though anticipating an impact—and it would be a victory if not for the fact that his eyes still burn defiantly. “Did it _ever_ occur to you that maybe I don’t _want_ to die protecting this stupid marble?”

“No one _cares_ what you want,” Kagome retorts darkly, because this is a world where good men die and innocent people are betrayed and girls who hope for a decent future end up pinned to trees and _no one cares_.

There’s a retort in the way Yasha opens his mouth, sparks igniting on his tongue and smoke escaping from between his teeth, but the sight of it suddenly has exhaustion sweeping over her. With a bitter and stinging clarity, it occurs to her that there’s really no point.

No. He’s not going to stop arguing, not going to suddenly concede her point and accept that she’s right. Hell, it was stupid to expect him to even listen to her in the first place. After all, when has she _ever_ mattered to him? He hadn’t cared when he was Sesshomaru—he had intended to strike her down from the very beginning, never faltered in his desire to make her another casualty of his perfectionist streak, his absolute and unending devotion to the Jewel—and he definitely isn’t going to care as the person he is now. Just because that carelessness now extends to the Shikon-no-Tama doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly started to care about all the things that he’s never bothered to care about before.

Hmph. Fine. Far be it for _her_ to lecture him about his responsibility to the Jewel. If he wants to throw it away, then fine. He’s not the only one who can exercise apathy.

Ignoring whatever snappish retort he aims at her, she turns towards the distant forest. The forest that has been the longest place she’s ever lingered since her mother died, and far more of a focal point (an almost-home) than any village where her would-be murderer lived. It is stolid viridian and lovely and one day, when her blood is fully youkai instead of split down the middle, perhaps she will make it the cornerstone of her territory—and _that_ is all she cares about. Because gods know no one is going to care about it for her.

The rush of wind against her face is a brisk welcome as she abandons him. Him, the shrunken village, and a springtime sky brimming over with fifty-years-gone.

* * *

“—aaaaand you’re gone. Great.”

Indignation blisters the underside of Yasha’s skin in crimson-amber sparks. In the distance, a scarlet-silver blur surfaces fleetingly over the curvature of the hill before vanishing again, and again, and again, and then abruptly ceases to reappear. Like she just got tired of taunting him with her departure. He swears the trees propped up against the horizon return his glare with the same unimpressed looks that grown-ups always give him before they tell him, promptly and curtly, to grow up already.

So what, that’s _it_? No biting words or last cutting remark or closing statement that would drop a curtain over the final act—no _nothing_. The other half of his sentence was splintered by her dramatic exit, leaving his retort to remain smoldering on his tongue, half-forgotten and perpetually unfinished.

Only her condescension remains. A reverberating echo, almost-tactile.

_“No one **cares** what you want.”_

“Keh! Well fuck you too, Bitch!” he shouts after her—futilely. She’s already long gone. Silence is all that answers.

As though prompted, the Shitty-no-Tama gives a firm tug at the back of his mind. Its presence is a bright, delicate thing that flutters at the fringes of his awareness like a butterfly’s jeweled wings, beautiful at first glance but every flash of color in the sunlight a blaring and demanding thing. Huffing, Yasha whirls around to glare at where the candy-glass pinpoint remains stuck firmly in the tree trunk. As he approaches, he finds it hovering just above eye-level, tantalizingly within reach but forcing him to crane his neck up just to pin it beneath the force of his displeasure. If he hadn’t ducked when he did, he has no doubt that the thing would have blasted a giant hole right through his skull—but the glow radiating off its glassy surface is completely unrepentant, more like peels of silent but mocking laughter. He has a sudden urge to smash it under his heel, regardless of what the old hag said.

Sap has arisen from the wooden cracks in thick rivulets, drowning the Jewel’s natural luminescence beneath a heavy layer of shining wetness and leaving the chain half-plastered to the bark in what could only be a punishment for some sin he committed in a past life. Having to yank the damn thing out is going to leave his hands absolutely _slathered_ in tree sap.

Bitch might as well have written _Fuck you_ on his forehead.

“ _This_ is why I don’t do any of this ‘being nice’ shit,” Yasha grumbles as he grabs at the chain, as stickiness smears his fingers and he finds himself struggling to yank the Shikon Jewel free without permanently gluing it to his hands. “Fucking _thankless_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, to summarize: Yasha is not having a good time, Kagome is not handling her grief very well, and we have an actual explanation for why someone _very clearly underqualified_ is hanging onto the Jewel. Because, in my humble opinion, "the plot says so" works much better when you dress it up all nice and pretty and make it less, y'know, glaringly obvious.
> 
> In other news! It turns out this was a _great_ year for me to get into this fandom because now there's a sequel/spinoff coming out this fall. (Yeah, the news is over a week old at this point, but I am Excited(TM) for new content, so sue me) I literally didn't sleep the day it was leaked because I was too busy imagining all the routes it could go. But I digress.
> 
> Translations:  
> Furoshiki = traditional wrapping cloth used to transport goods  
> Gengou = a system by which years are recorded based upon the eras they encompass; for example, the Heisei Era (1989-2019) ended on April 30, 2019, and the Reiwa Period (2019-onward) began at midnight of the next day, so 2019 would be considered Reiwa 1 and Heisei 31  
> Kanji = the logographic characters used in the Japanese writing system  
> Omikuji = fortune-telling charms sold at Shinto shrine and are particularly popular around New Year’s  
> Satsuki = an abbreviation of Sanaetsuki, lit. “early rice-planting month”; an old term for the month that roughly corresponds to the month of May  
> Shogun = a warlord that was appointed by the emperor to preside over a certain region; shogunates existed when the emperor was overthrown and the shogun came together in order to rule through oligarchical means  
> Reiryoku = lit. “spiritual power”, this refers to the purifying power used by a holy person to dispel dark energies  
> Youki = lit. “youkai aura”, this is a canon term for the power that youkai possess
> 
> Cultural notes:  
> The Gregorian solar calendar, which is now used universally to record years (i.e., the BC/AD, or BCE/CE, system), was first introduced to Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912). Prior to that, Japan recorded the months using a system based on the Chinese lunar calendar, and exclusively used the gengou system to track the years. After the Gregorian calendar was introduced, Japan used the gengou system in conjunction to the solar calendar, while completely scrapping the Chinese lunar calendar. The Sengoku Period (1467-1615) predates the Meiji Period by several centuries, so they wouldn’t know of the Gregorian calendar now used in modern Japan.
> 
> The Ashikaga Shogunate acted as the main ruling body of Japan during the Muramochi Period (1336-1573), having overthrown the Emperor and seizing power for themselves. Because they ruled all throughout the Muramochi Period, they are also known as the Muramochi Shogunate. It collapsed during the Onin War (1467), which created a massive power vacuum that set off the Sengoku Period, and was officially dissolved permanently when the last Ashikaga shogun was killed by Oda Nobunaga in 1573.
> 
> As always, comments and questions are welcome!
> 
> Sincerely,  
> Tsuki


End file.
